


One of Us Must Be Crazy

by Annabel7



Category: Alien Series, Alien: Isolation (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ficlets, Multi, Robot/Human Relationships, Tumblr Prompts, literally just all the prompts off the tumblr blog collected in one place, there's so much and so many different things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:13:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 68
Words: 67,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22560799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annabel7/pseuds/Annabel7
Summary: A collection of ficlets, drabbles, and plot bunnies as posted on one-of-us-must-be-crazy.tumblr.com  in response to various asks and prompts I've been sent. Rated as Mature even though most chapters will be G to T if you took away Amanda's language. Drabbles that might be closer to E will be marked at the top.
Relationships: Amanda Ripley/Christopher Samuels
Comments: 26
Kudos: 40





	1. Intro.

By popular demand, here's a fic that will be collecting all the bits and pieces of ripuels nonsense that I've written the past few years. I'll be focusing on text-posts and asks, anything of more than a few sentences. They won't be the memes or chat posts (though I may collect some of those in a 'texts in Amanda's phone' chapter later on, not sure yet).

That being said, have a chat meme to get things started:

CHAPTER ONE.

**samuels:** (◡‿◡✿)

 **samuels:** (ʘ‿ʘ✿) “what did you say about amanda”

 **samuels:** (ʘ‿ʘ)ノ✿ "hold my flower”

 **amanda:** ─=≡Σ＼(｡-_-｡)ノ✿ “kick his ass, baby I got yo flower. and a flame thrower im coming for backup”

END CHAPTER ONE.

Welcome to the madness. Good luck.


	2. she can hyphenate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're not dating here. They might have held hands, maybe once. But they're both as clueless as can be.

Amanda is absolutely the kind of person who "knows a guy" for every kind of semi-legal situation you could ever find yourself in. 

Once back from hell, she knows she owes Samuels her life, and at an utter loss at how to repay him (despite his insistence that returning for his body made them even) she calls up a woman she used to know.

If she can't repay him for saving hers, she'll give him the next best thing: his own life.

Her friend gets it all, ID's, Lunar Citizen Number, passport, even an accident record on Terra and a job history. It takes three weeks to get the whole lot put together, drawing from a few random credit histories from smaller, less secure banks. 

The only issue is the name. His first can stay, which he's glad for and she likes that he seems fondly attached to it: perhaps becuase it is the only thing to him that is uniquely his own. But the last name, his _model's name is Samuels._ It has to go, and a quick search engine check for common-enough but not too common surnames within six hours of his accent's origin turns up a short list, and they find a name that sounds nice enough. Not too ordinary, and very few living "family" members to worry about ever running into him.

“Christopher McClaren then?” she asks, about to type it into the encrypted message to her friend. 

“I suppose it works as well as anything.” Then, after a pause he hesitantly adds: “Do you like it?”

“Why would that matter?” she’s searching his face for a reason, maybe he’s just being…him. Always asking her opinions, her likes, her wants. “It’s not going to be my name, Chris,” it sounds too harsh so she adds a smile; one he warmly returns.

As she walks away, he mumbles something, she swears it sounded a bit like _maybe_ _it could be._


	3. Forbidden Poster

Samuels arrives home just in time to see Amanda standing precariously on top of one of their barstool-style kitchen chairs, trying to hang the poster in their living area, and of course she didn't take one of the stools that wasn't wobbly.

After running over to steady her (and nearly knocking her over doing so; strong hands out of nowhere still frighten her, and he usually announces himself first) he notices exactly _what_ she’s been hanging.

“Amy, please don’t.”

“It’s an old movie; my dad and I watched all the old spacepunk movies, you know how much they mean to me–” Emotional appeal. Not working. Not with this one.

“What’s wrong with Star Trek then? Or the other 'Star' one? Or _any_ of the others?”

“I happen to like the sentiment on this one.”

“Please. _Please._ What will guests think?” she considers this for a moment. Only a very, very select few of their already small group of friends are aware that Amanda was the only human living in the flat, and while Hendricks was in no position to criticize, there was still Decker, and Taylor too. She knows that he still cares deeply about what they think of him. And he wants to be seen as someone who took a commitment to being human, not someone who would make jokes about _not_ being human. Or display anything that would allude to the fact that he does more than just hold her hand when they’re—-

She smiles wickedly.

“You’re right.”

“Amanda—I am?” that’s a new feeling. She’s never changed opinions before.

“I think it would look much better in our room.” 

_I should have known_ , he thinks, defeated.

“Wait, no, dear, you were quite right, it matches the colors in the carpet out here it should stay–”

“No, no, if you don’t think it works out here then I’ll just hang it up in there,” she’s already taking the framed poster off the hook and stepping off the chair with it. There’s no stopping her.

“Would it be false hope to think that you’ll put it somewhere other than directly over the bed?” he asks after her as she walks it down the hall.

“Yup.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poster she was trying to hang was the one of Forbidden Planet, where Robby the Robot is carrying a swooning woman bridal style across a Martian looking landscape.


	4. Lucky Star WIP

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will eventually happen in Lucky Star, though a little differently.

She spent all morning in the legal offices, trying really damn hard not to see the door across the hall with the nameplate ‘TAYLOR’ still on it; signing papers and continuing to threaten them with exposure if they didn’t meet her requirements. Finally, one last document, transfer of ownership, and Christopher Samuels no longer was Weyland-Yutani property. Still property, Amanda thought with a grimace, but at least he wasn’t theirs anymore. He didn’t seem bothered at all by the fact that Amanda owned him, as much as it disturbed her. After that she had gone to the grocery store, the book shop, and then home.

“There…” Amanda gave a slight smile to herself; the apartment was cleaned top to bottom, washed the bedding, and procured a bottle of wine, nicer than usual coffee, a fine tea blend (or at least that’s what the girl at the shop called it, Amanda herself was clueless). She had wrapped a hardcover copy of War and Peace in parcel paper and left it on the bedside table. Of course, she didn’t know if he actually enjoyed it, or if he had only quoted it to her becuase the line fit in the moment, but it was her only point of reference, and she rarely read anything so old after high school.

A dimmer she had installed in the ceiling lamp cast a candle-like glow over the counter bar that served as both the diver between kitchen and living room, and as a dining table. A glass of water beside her wineglass, and a glass of white liquid beside his. Life was always going to be like this, constant little reminders about their differences.

He was supposed to come _directly_ home after work today. 

An hour after he was supposed to clock out, there was still no sign, and Amanda gave in, putting her boots back on, stuffing the apartment card key and a microtaser in her pocket before opening the door to storm the company offices herself.

“Ripley?”

he was only ten feet away, walking calmly down the hall was a small document case in one hand.

“What the hell took you so long?!” she watched as Samuels stepped back slightly, aware first of her anger, then of the tinge of fear in her voice. “I thought they…I don’t put anything below them.”

“Apologies,” he said, looking about the hall, aware through wireless of where the cameras were. He met her eyes, and then deliberately looked from her to the still-open door. She nodded slightly and went back inside, with him following. “I had paperwork to finish, and then I had to follow through with the last day of programming to check into the synthetics barracks, and then they wanted to scan my serial number to be sure it _was_ me they were sending out–”

“Its fine. I’m sorry. I was…scared.” there was no reply, so she looked back to him, he looked confused. “Christopher?” his first name still felt simultaneously very natural and very strange.

“Yes?”

“You okay?”

“I am, disoriented that’s all,” he had a slight smile on now, and she felt better. “How long were you working on this?”

“Not long,” _lie_. “But its not everyday someone moves in with me,” 

“I….thank you. You’re too kind,” 

she tries to take his case from him, but ever the gentleman he instead sets it on the floor, removes her coat for her, hangs it in the closet, and puts his case on the shelf.

“It wasn’t anything big, I just cleaned and changed the lights. But you do realize you’re not here as my PA or to wait on me, right? You’re here as my…” _boyfriend_ sounded juvenile for someone that looked as dignified (…and old) as he did, _lover_ sounded like something out of a bad romance novel from the magazine rack at the market. “As my _partner_.”

“For as long as you want me to be.” he said.

“No, for good. Until the day you want something else, or someone different, you’re stuck with me.” she crossed her arms, a carefully calculated smirk. No moody disagreements about his humanity tonight.

“As you wish then,” he reached a hand out to her; by now she knew that this was about as close to requesting physical contact as he could get around his protocols for now, and she walked forward hugging him tightly. He’s so quick to hold her back, and kiss the top of her head that she almost wonders if he’s written that in as an automatic response or if he’s learned it.

“Did you leave your bags at the front desk?”

“No, why would you ask?” 

“I emptied out some of hall closet, and some dresser drawers in my–in the bedroom–but you don’t have anything with you, or a suitcase or–”

“I don’t have one.”

“ _What?!”_

He shrugs, it seems so obvious to him, but he explains to her anyway, “There were four others of my model that work in the building, we all have the same uniforms, and–”

“ _YOU DON’T OWN ANYTHING???”_

 _“_ There’s a few books in my office yet, and I didn’t bother bringing my charging appar–”

“ _THOSE FUCKING–_

“–Amy please, its not unordinary–”

“What about a change of clothes? Nothing?” she’s positively fuming at this point, and he gives her a little more space. 

“I have a small fish tank there too, but Fish really shouldn’t be moved–”

“What?”

“That’s his name, Fish, I wasn’t…as creative yet as I am now when I got him.”

“I didn’t mean its name I meant–oh my God, put your coat back on.”

“The office is closed, its okay, I feed him in the morning anyway and–”

“I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE DAMN FISH.” he looks mildly frightened of her. “We’re are going to the _godforsaken_ mall and getting you real clothes that don’t have those assholes’ logo on them.”


	5. *insert la petite mort joke here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In light of the eerie, Hal-9000 voice Samuels has in the deleted audio, I’d like to do something to make that less depressing. 
> 
> As discussed with others who listened to it, I suggest the head-canon that there are other situations (ones that are decidedly more fun than imminent death*) where he loses partial control or function of his voice.

Amanda falls back on the bunk next to him, half gasping with her arm draped across him, eyes dark but adoring.

“Damn you improved _quick_ ,” she says, a little teasingly. He smirks a little. 

“Thank you, dear,” he meant to reply with a bit of sarcasm, that was _it_ , but his voice grates out with digital reverb and he clamps his hand over his mouth in horror; Amanda sits up, worried. 

“Are you okay?! Chris–what was–?”

“I’m fine–” and he sounds like C3PO talking through a tin can. “I…… Vocal command is hazy.”

 _“oooooh my God I broke you_.”

“It’s coming back, I think,” his voice starts to return to normal, “I have no idea what happened that was… I’m sorry….” He doesn’t like reminders _ever_ that he’s a synth, but he especially doesn’t like them when he’s _here,_ and assumes that Amanda doesn’t want to be reminded she’s holding congress with a glorified computer either.

“Don’t be, that was amazing.” she’s trying not to laugh, he looks so embarrassed but she can’t help it “I broke you; I actually made you speechless,” and she wonders a bit, when she lays back down next to him, smoothing his rumpled hair back affectionately, if she’s a touch crazy because she didn’t mind it at all; as with the rest of his quirks (both human ones and mechanical ones) she finds it endearing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reason #1 Amanda was banned from Cards Against Humanity
> 
> Zula, drawing a black card: “’Gentleman in the streets, ‘blank’ in the sheets’”
> 
> Amanda, putting down a white card: “’Violating the first law of robotics’“
> 
> Samuels, who didn’t want to play in the first place: “Amanda no.”


	6. names again and other asks

**jupiter: if you could choose your own name what would it be?  
**

Amanda favored her name, but had considered changing it a thousand times. The chance to start over, to forget, to not correct well-meaning coworkers who called her ‘Mandy,’ _It’s Amy, actually, yes I know that’s a weird nickname for it_. Half the reason she started going by her surname was because of that. Once she was off-Earth and most were called by their last names only, she felt relieved. Her last name she’d never change though, even if she met someone she’d rather hyphenate the names or else just keep her own.

Synthetics do not chose their own names, but they aren’t sentimental about themselves either. Samuels, even once capable of sentiment, was far too pragmatic to waste time on thinking of a name he’d chose for himself. It wasn’t until returning to Luna– slightly burned, a little glitchy, but otherwise alright–with Ripley–also damaged, but in less obvious ways–that changing it became important. After all he and the rest of his model shared the same last name. It wouldn’t do. Census papers from Earth and Luna, as well as other outposts were searched, a family name with only dead or mostly dead relatives, and none off-world came up with a few, but of them one sounded far too Greek for someone with a Cumbrian accent, two were Chinese, and the third, Scottish. 

“It’s not even English,”

“It’s close enough, you could have had a parent who was originally from Scotland?” Amanda had a total of two hours of time in the hacked census records of Luna to file him as a human and not a ~technically stolen~ synthetic. And he was taking nearly all of it to make _such a simple decision_. 

“Logically, but we’ll be constantly explain–”

“ _We?”_ she echoed, mock offended, but truely surprised.

 _“_ I—Well, you do always seem eager to jump in the second anyone tries to question me.” he wasn’t wrong, Ripley snapped at anyone on the pirate vessel that rescued them who _dared_ refer to him as a ‘robot’ despite his protests that they were correct.

“You might be onto something.”

“….what?”

“I could hyphenate my name in here before it locks me out; then you have an excuse to be on Luna; you followed me when I got positioned at Tranquility Base.”

“Th-That’s not necessary–You don’t have–”

“Too late, its done.”

**phobos: what was your favorite song as a child?**

No idea what was popular during the time that Amanda would have been growing up, but I always picture her listening to something akin to hard-rock from the 70′s and 80′s, (there was a bad joke about Great White’s “Rock Me” at one point, I hope the post has evaporated into space at this point omg); maybe a song her mother or grandmother might have sung to her as a very young child?

and Samuels is probably like, idk, five or something and I doubt that Weyland-Yutani hands out iPods to their synthetics. He’d like anything, and a few other posts are floating around by other people about how he just finds any music _interesting_ and has no preference to one specific genre or style.

**comet: what’s your biggest secret?**

Amanda Tei Ripley had a police record until she and the two friends she was arrested with hacked into the station’s computer and wiped their files. The most impressive item being illegally being part of an illegal road racing circuit on highways that were illegal to race on. It takes a bit of digging through her file and various connections before Samuels finds that she’s been arrested twice as a juvenile and once as an adult, but he can’t find any information about _what it was for_?

Its canon (at least since _Bug Hunt’s_ publication if that means anything) that self-aware androids were destroyed before they could leave the labs. So if one of them noticed that they were developing some kind of sentience, they’d want to keep it quiet, and play it down. The slow process of realizing that he preferences, dislikes, and increasingly strong opinions about some of his coworkers and managers is _terrifying_ to Samuels, but he keeps his mouth shut, and tries to write it off as paranoia—which, he shouldn’t have either. Its not until all hell breaks loose at Sevastapol that he gives up the charade in favor of displaying worry, anger, and…not that, he cares too much about her to show too much of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ridley Scott's Alien Isolation movie: Opens the same way as the game, gritty retro-future realism. No more or less body horror than the existing movies. Ends with Amanda gets recused by a ship captained by a McClaren. Credits.  
> Del Toro's Alien Isolation movie: Opens with Amanda and her synth boyfriend (?) finding out thru his company about the Nostromo cover-up. His death is 9999% more tragic. Lots more gore thru out. Their last name was McClaren the whole time. Credits.


	7. Prompt: April Fool's

“That about does it…” Amanda told herself, screwing the cover onto the small semi-spherical contraption. A more civilized noisemaker. One she’s been fiddling around with after work for weeks, here and there, shoving it aside when she heard her partner so much as close a book in the main room. Now it was done though, and the militarily unflappable droid was going to show her whether or not it was possible to catch a synthetic off guard.

Their room was the opposite end of the apartment from her work room, and she walked to it as quiet as she could, careful of the carpet, of anything she might have left on the floor, of any trip hazards he so innocently set out earlier. Camera in one hand, and noisemaker in the other, she pressed its on button and rolled it into their room, an ungodly cacophony of sirens, screams, and squeaks, not to mention the blinding strobe light.

“ _GOT YA!”_ the form under the duvet didn’t move. “Seriously there’s no _fucking way_ you slept through that even if you _are_ asleep.” Nothing. “Chris?…. _Christopher?!”_ she dropped the camera and ran over to the bed, pulling the blankets back to—pillows. “You’ve got to be— _AAAARGGGH!!!!”_ she screamed as a pair of too-strong arms wrapped around her like a vice.

“That is a direct violation of safety protocols.” Ripley paused for a short moment in sheer terror before her mind caught up with her.

“How the hell did you know?”

“You are not subtle my dear.”

“Cute. Real cute. Give me that line about safety again and I’ll remotely recode your vocal abilities.”

“Whatever pleases you, after all I am built to—“

“ _DO NOT_.” She wriggled in his arms until he loosened his grip enough that she could turn to face him. “That shit-faced grin is gonna go.”

“I look forward to whatever torture you have planned for me,”

“You…. _you_ …” he pressed a short kiss onto her forehead.

“Whatever you’d like, luv, but please turn that monstrosity off first,” he added with a vague gesture to the toy on the ground, still screaming.

“….I don’t know how.”

“Well please try because someone’s at our door, probably over this month’s third noise violation,”

“The _last_ noise violation was your fault,”

“Yes, but it was _your_ noise, and you _asked_ for the action which caused the overly loud series of explicative.”

She can’t argue with that. Still. His fault.

Amanda finally gave up trying to turn it off, and hit it against the side of the dresser, and it was immediately effective.

“What are you going to tell them?” she asked as he headed for their front door.

“That you were in your bedroom with a new toy, and were a little over zealous. The truth, nothing more or less.”

“Fine, whatever.” A pause. “ _WAIT NO YOU CAN’T TELL THEM THAT IT’S—“_


	8. Ask: Any lines they refuse to cross with each other?

Becuase Ripley essentially raised herself, she seems both much older than 26, and MUCH younger than 26. She can take care of herself, she can support herself, survive–in both traumatizing and mundane situations; and yet she’ll get over excited and over eager trying to make friends, trying to keep her high score on the antique _Galaga_ game at the bar. She’s immature in long-term relationships, not good at communication, and not good at compromise either. 

More than once Christopher has stopped himself, more than once, from saying “ _Grow up_.”

—-

Early on, before cryosleep on the _Torrens_ , Amanda pestered him. Often. It was light-hearted, well meaning. He was patient by design, willing to answer everything, and she liked talking with him. Samuels (by design, she told herself) was much more companionable than the captain or pilot; and seemed easier to approach than the other WY employee sent with them.

“Pathetic isn’t it?” she said to herself the morning they were supposed to go into cryo; staring hungrily (no eating before cryo) at the ship’s larder door. Maybe it was low-blood sugar, maybe it was the steady dreariness of extended solitude flowing back; the hollow-cold feeling that she spoke with the android to try and alleviate. 

“What is?” she didn’t know if he was going in cryo. Didn’t know if he _needed_ it. They already had the ‘can you even get bored???’ conversation. For his sake, she hoped they’d let him sleep, not be aware of the months of loneliness. 

“That the longest lasting–” _friendship?_ _We really aren’t friends_. “Person that didn’t walk away from me in three years is a robot.”

He was silent for a moment. Not disappointed in her, in her words, but in himself for thinking that they were getting along on a more human level than that. But no, though she never asked him to compute navigational charts, to read meteor and atmospheric data sheets, to provide tedious and detailed reports nightly to the company’s Luna base, or to, on top of all else take care of all housekeeping on the ship–she was still using him for a purpose, to ease the sting of isolation, to not be alone. Companionship and entertainment were possible uses for androids of course, and despite the ‘lives’ of relative luxury they had in comparison to marine, labor, or office models, he didn’t envy them. A nasty sort of trick to make a thing that is human in all but its own awareness. For a time though he’d been thinking that that was what Am–RIpley either forgot that he wasn’t sentient, or didn’t seem to mind it.

The fact that he was somehow able to be disappointed at all didn’t register in the moment.

“I apologize for my shortcomings, and those of your previous companions.”

“Companion? Is that what you are now?” he can’t see into her head, can’t see the debate between ‘this is pathetic’ and ‘if he acts like he feels, if he sounds like he feels, then close enough’ in contrast to a dream she woke up from the other night, his name heavy on her tongue, handfuls of sheets, dull ache in a few places that forced her waking mind to recall her dream-self’s actions.

“No, I’m afraid. Merely the company robot sent to assure the smoothness of the voyage.” There was just enough self-hatred in his voice for Amanda to read as venom, and her throat tightened around a cry.

 _Even more pathetic, I can’t even keep him around_.

Days, months, on being revived from cryo she doesn’t refer to the exchange again, trying to pick up whatever their odd alliance was from the start, and he seemed to forgive her if not forget the insult entirely.

Even during the _rare_ disagreement, Amanda avoids calling him a robot at all costs, every other insult hissed through her teeth at him in moments when he pried too deeply at her vulnerable spots, but never that, even at his most inhuman she never called him as such again.


	9. Ask: Nicknames? Pet names? Any in-jokes?

Ripley would bet her life on the fact that she doesn’t call her housemate anything other than “Samuels” “Christopher” or “Chris,” however she’s been known to call him ‘honey’ more than once.

On the other side, Samuels has called her honey, dear, luv, darling, sweetheart…And two weeks after sharing a space with her, she shocked him but interrupting what he was saying:

“Are you asleep? Amanda–”

“Amy.” she said shortly, and he could feel that she was holding her breath. Sitting up next to him on the edge of his bunk, she didn’t want to sleep, but exhaustion had her resting at his shoulder, her arms around his waist for support more than affection as he paged through some records found in the same salvage from the station that he was in. 

“Amy?”

“‘s what my mom called me, and my dad when he was still around. I don’t know how they got it out of ‘Amanda’ but if you want then–you can call me that.”

For in-jokes…Once Ripley started to recover from what they’d gone through, Samuels was more than shocked to find out _she has a sense of humor_. She’s silly, and enjoys laughing, telling awful jokes, and finding the most random things funny. She likes to tease him, relentlessly; it was upsetting at first, until she followed her little jabs at him with a kiss on the cheek and he realized it was a kind of affection. Inside jokes though are something you get after a lot of time together, and thus far all their time together has been the opposite of a joke. Well maybe a cosmic joke? But not anything they’d find amusing.

There’s a lot of jokes about him possibly being a synthetic though; at Halloween Amanda was in a Star Trek engineer’s uniform handing out candy and whenever a kid asked Samuels what he was supposed to be he answered “A synthetic.”


	10. Ask: Are they comfortable with each other? Anything they have to have their privacy for?

It was mostly a rushed arrangement, begging the rescuers to let her try to revive the droid they picked up amongst other space debris and salvage, extending her run without sleep for another day while she tried every software hack she could remember from her computer engineer classmates in college. This wasn’t her field, this was something else, and she felt like she was trying to do brain surgery. An increased awkwardness from him, and avoidance of the subject of his near-death (or death? was he really dead for a while?), before she set a hand on his arm, “ _don’t push me out, what’s wrong?”_ followed by his protocols being fried enough, his reserve worn down enough from the past 70-odd hours, to hesitantly kiss her forehead. “ _Thank you, for not letting me be sold as scrap_.” 

And that was the start; not much else in the way of flirting, not dating certainly, just two survivors deciding to stay. So of course, neither is comfortable with the other for some time. Amanda in particular has been alone for so long that having someone is….strange, and not always in a good way. She’s very much set in her routine, and returning to reality after the events is jarring enough without having to handle this new, bizarre thing. Her new partner is even less accustomed to cohabitation, despite having shared what WY called ‘dormitories’ that were more akin to military barracks, with at least a dozen other droids, some of his make, others different. Living with a human is very, very strange. ‘Sleeping’ in a real bed is strange. The option to eat and drink if he wants to (though he still doesn’t need it, or particularly enjoy it) is strange. Not to mention the sinking feeling that this is going to be over in a week, when Amanda has fully processed what’s happened to her, what they’ve been through, realizes the wrongness of their situation, and throws him out of her home and her life. 

It’s a good two months before they’re comfortable around each other at all.

Amanda likes her privacy when she’s working; a little spare room of their apartment is converted into a workroom, and her various projects line the floor, table, and shelves in it. She likes silence or a radio, and no company.

Samuels refuses to recharge or run updates or diagnostics–any of his technical care really–in front of Amanda. Anything where he has to physically connect the hidden port in his arm to a cord in the computer or the wall. He’s joyous that she deems him a worthy companion, and knows that she accepts what he is, but he’s not going to make the poor girl sleep next to a thing plugged into an electrical outlet for power. 

Of course, Amanda says he’s being ridiculous, but she lets him be.


	11. Ask: What do they fight about? What are their arguments like?

They don’t argue much, and then that ends up being the point of argument.

“ _If you don’t like something then just fucking say it!”_

 _“_ I’m indifferent, whatever it is I–”

“But what do you _want_? I hardly even know you, and you aren’t making it easier just _tell me_.”

“I’m sorry that there isn’t much to know–”

“ _For fuck’s sake_.”

He doesn’t like to have opinions, and she’s convinced that his lack of opinions is programmed rather than learned. 

“I’d rather you do something that upsets me than to just play along like some custom-made companion. You’re not a pleasure bot for God’s sake, you’re a _person_. Pick a movie. A place to eat. Choose your own side of the bed–just stop doing everything so…so…perfect.”

Their arguments still are short lived, and usually end when one of them crosses the other’s Line. Where that line falls changes based on the argument type, and what the subject of it is, but it’s always how fights end. Making up usually involves Amanda feeling like she has to beg forgivness–she doesn’t, he makes it very clear he doesn’t even need an apology, she is human, with human differences to him and human flaws, and the only reason it bothers him is that it sometimes puts space between them he’d rather not be there.

It has to be her to initiate any kind of make up, however, as his protocols won’t let him bother her when she’s upset with him.


	12. Dreams prompt

> Whatever ship rescues Amanda and finds Samuels doesn’t have enough cryopods to allow for their synths to sleep, let alone Samuels, and obviously humans have priority. Amanda doesn’t think much of if, but _the journey home is nearly two years_. With no company other than a very basic android with little personality programmed in, and no natural feelings to it. 
> 
> Of course, there’s enough for him to do at first; he searches every corner of the ship to make sure that none of those _beasts_ have made it in. He compulsively checks every pod over and over to be sure none of the crew have been infected. Especially Amanda–and her…he watches her vitals, wires it so that if any of them change by a measurable amount the alarm will go off, and he’ll be able to know wherever he is on the ship.
> 
> He prepares a report on the disaster, checks himself over and over for remains of Seegson programing and possible malfunctions. The machinery is old enough that he can get glimpses of the cryopod occupants’ REM imagery….of their dreams.

It has to be some breech of privacy for humans, and despite the limited privacy they had in the tiny shared cabin they were given, this seems like it would cross a line. _Amanda’s fingers woven through his own, squeezing his hand as hard as she could before he shut her into her pod_. Then again the experience she had there…would make sense that she’d have nightmares, and if she was having a nightmare he would have an excuse, a _reason_ to wake her if only for a few hours, a day–hear her voice again, hold her while her arms were tight around him, relieved. 

Looking into her REM imagery, he doesn’t get anything vivid–some humans don’t have vivid dreams, and Amanda’s are a hazy world of past and present, non-linear, an adult Amanda building with a construction toy while her parents argue in the distant backdrop; a very young Amanda working in the shop that he found her in; teenage Amanda lost in Sevastapol. Ellen Ripley cocooned by an egg, her arms out, almost like religious symbology. Amanda sitting across from him on the bunk of the little cabin, her knees up to her chest, hugging her legs–he had offered her contact, if she needed it, wanted it, and immediately she latched onto him, shaking, sobbing. Humans were so fragile, and he had always wondered, almost sickly, how much they could take. He never wanted to see it happen like this though. The edges remain blurry, his dream form takes a breathe, pulls her closer, shifts so she rests on his lap, leans back against the wall, and lets Amanda stay there, rubbing small circles over her back as she calms down. He’s a human. 

Real-life, real-time Samuels watches for a few moments longer, just to be sure the nightmare elements have faded, and then takes off the viewer, turning it off. Let Amanda adjust her dream-memory to whatever makes her more comfortable. There’s no envy the of the dream version of him, just the feeling that Ripley would prefer the touch of another human rather than that of a synthetic. 


	13. Ask: Android Quriks

  * Samuels, like the later marine models in canon, can connect wirelessly to various devices and networks; which means that if there’s a system for it, he can tap into it, and both wreak havoc or do helpful things like turn the lights on or off. This is basically bluetooth. Once he turned off Ripley’s music after the third time Mr. Roboto came up on ‘shuffle’ in an hour. 


  * He’s automatically, partially due to the wireless ability and partially becuase of his heightened senses, knows if a person he’s talking to is a person or a synthetic.


  * There’s nothing that can make him drunk, short of overwhelming his systems. Not to be a complete romantic sap but Ripley does it to him sometimes, his sense of logic that sits at the forefront of his mind ebbs away enough for him to sound a bit silly, tipsy. 


  * Becuase of the way that his vocal system is structured, he can’t cry, sing very well, and it takes him a LONG time to be able to mimic anything that sounded like human laughter. The weird noise and motion he made when he first tried out laughing sounded frankly _horrifying_ , with Amanda collecting herself quickly to _try_ and smile encouragingly “That wasn’t bad,” “That was horrible.” “Yeah keep working on it.”


  * With few exceptions, he can’t deny a direct order from his owner. When Ripley talked (threatened) WY into signing him over, she had him write her in as his owner, as much as she _hated_ it. Better he has to listen to her to take the trash out than WY ordering him to get rid of a risk to the company and snapping her neck. 


  * This is stolen _directly_ from the book _The Mad Scientist’s Daughter_ by Cassandra Rose Clarke, but around the same time that Weyland Yutani started to make all models fully lifelike in appearance for purposes of sneaky and otherwise unsavory goals, a few graduate students thought it would be HILARIOUS to program the machines printing the soft tissues to include ‘blood’ vessels down south, among other abilities. And a lot of nerve sensors. ~~After the shit he and Amanda went through the _least_ they deserve is having the robot able to orgasm. Beyond that I don’t give a fuck. It’s fanfiction. It’s garbage fanfiction. Leave me be.~~


  * During the uses of this bit of coding, if one or both parties involved go too hard at it, his voice goes to static. He’s not damaged, but the first time that happened Ripley flipped out “ARE YOU OKAY?! CHRIS? CHRISTOPHER PLEASE–” “I’m….fine…sorry,” and he’s so ashamed of it at first, hating to show what he is so obviously in any situation, let alone when he’s with her, but she likes it. Once she finds out that he isn’t injured, that its just a quirk or a glitch, she gets _very_ smug about it “I broke you :) “


  * Obviously he doesn’t get mental illness, but his mind processes their trauma by adapting security programs; he feels something like anxiety as his logic programs tell him that there _could_ be something wrong, that there isn’t, but there _could_ be, and that he needs to patrol their apartment. Rewriting this adaptation takes both personal effort and a lot of external reassurance from his new companion.


  * He has photo-perfect memory, almost like a film, of everything he’s experienced and can view or upload playback of it in video form. E v e r y t h i n g. 


  * I have no idea how long a synthetic’s charge lasts for, so I wrote that once a month or every other month he tops off his power with a short recharge, to avoid having to spend multiple days unconscious recharging when he runs out entirely. A hidden port in his arm can connect to a wire for either phsyical computer connections or charging. 


  * Androids have a power-save mode during which they’re only vaguely aware of external stimuli for the sake of self-preservation (and of their operators, that should they be called on they can wake themselves and come to the humans’ aid). Internal temperature drops slightly, and processors slow down, while software programs shut down entirely. It’s similar to what a human would think of as ‘relaxing.’ Samuels uses this most nights to go to bed with Ripley. He wakes up from this with zero drowsiness.


  * Or of course there is a full shutdown, which is much harder for a synthetic to get out of, much closer to actual human sleep than power-save. Normally he’ll program if for a few hours, but only if he’s genuinely in need of running updates or diagnostics, or at risk of overheating, as he doesn’t like ‘leaving’ her alone for that long. During this, he doesn’t have _any_ sound or vibration or the vague feeling that could be compared to a pulse, and Ripley tries to pretend that his more-or-less-dead appearance doesn’t bother her, so he can still wake up in bed like normal. 


  * Like any technology, a synthetic will eventually be out of date and incompatible with new updates. In theory his core processors and memory could be removed and replaced into a new body, and they’ve already done this once upon returning to Luna. 


  * Synthetics AI is adaptive, and while Samuels was already one of the “mistakes,” models that have become sentient during development, he’s very very VERY obviously Not Human the more you talk to him. Five, ten, twenty years after he’s been living like one however, he’s nearly indistinguishable from a human being in his words and behavior.


  * Becuase he can tap into wi-fi, he cheats at trivia games. Ripley could have killed him for it, but now they’re the champions at her favorite bar’s trivia night, and have won a lot of free alcohol, so she doesn’t mind.




	14. Various Headcanon Requests

**Headcanon A: realistic**

Both of them were traumatized from what they’ve been through. Amanda in typical human fashion and Samuels in the way he’s become hyper sensitive to possible danger. His own well-being be damned, but this scared human is all he has, and he does recognize that he’s about all she has too; and efforts are made to act the role of security guard at night, for two weeks after they’ve found a mostly-permanent residence. Even after Amanda and he are intimate partners he still leaves her room to observe the rest of the flat; only returning to her if he hears her have a nightmare. For being so independent and alone, she’s now finding it hard to fall asleep without being held at least by the hand.

When she finally confronted him about this (and I wrote this whole thing as a fic at one point bc I’m not original enough to make a second realistic headcanon) and convinced him to at least try to stay with her, he found that her presence–alive and well and safe, right here–was calming too.

**Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious**

Neither of them knew. How could they? The pleasure models were brainless, and only programmed to react, unable to feel emotions or physical sensations. They’re behavior was binary, not whatever amorphous galaxy of a mess his internal workings had become. Typical models didn’t engage in such activities, and if they did, they and their operators kept it quiet.

There wasn’t even enough on synthetics yet for it to be considered a kink, it was just….taboo. Unseemly. Not something to mention or think on or theorize, let alone take pride in; not in the way that Ripley was _still_ smiling down at him, beaming, proud, smug, content, loving all at once.

“……I-I don’t…That….that was not–Amanda did that just–”

“Did it feel nice? Bad?”

“……..Initial scans show no internal errors but for a moment there was so much white noise and data and sensory—……..I have nothing to compare that to. _Amy what_ ,” he has a vague sense that he can control his limbs now, after their tenseness had faded he didn’t even know if he could move them; and gently yet firmly held her hips in place when she started to slowly move on him. “Amy what the _hell_ just happened?”

“Most likely orgasm, possibly system failure. Maybe both? Run a deeper systems diagnostics, and if nothing’s broken , I want to try that again.”

“I thought I died.”

“But you didn’t.”

“ _I thought I did_.”

“Was it nice?”

“I’m—! …….I mean. It wasn’t _unpleasant_. Only. I don’t. It was. Ah.”

‘I said it at the start, we don’t ever have to do this again if you don’t like it.”

“NO!”

“Hmm?”

“……………………………………………iwanttodoitagain. please.”

at this point Ripley starts choking on apologies becuase she’s laughing to hard to formulate a real response.

Okay so that wasn’t really _not_ realistic becuase as I said before. Their lives are both garbage and the very least (THE. VERY. LEAST.) the universe owes the poor sap is to be able to enjoy whatever they get up to.

**Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends**

Samuels outlives her, naturally. He knew he would, they both did, but it didn’t help, and the longer he put off ever contemplating the inevitable the more Ripley got nearly angry with him. Find someone else, someone younger, move on; those were her mantra of orders and even though she didn’t want to witness him falling in love again, she thought it’d be easier to die knowing that he wouldn’t be alone.

Amanda also knew, somehow, that he was being honest when he told her absolutely not. It was _unrealistic_ she’d argue over and over, no matter how much you loved someone, they die, you fall in love again, people do it all the time. And there’d be a short moment of worry turned to confusion then _I’m not a person, luv._

It isn’t so bad either, not at first, when he indulges in week-long shut-downs, reliving days of memory play-back at a time; waking only to tend to their home and when he can be bothered, his own vitals. The pain is so strong during those moments that it’s almost numbing. But it can’t last forever, and whether its age, or pain, or too little use, he can sense the corrosion, decay of his abilities. Motion, speech, emotions, physical sensations all wear off, and he dedicates whatever power he has left to memory, begging whatever could possibly listen to a synthetic that Amanda, who never really believed in anything, prayed on her deathbed that he had enough of a soul to join her in wherever she was going. 

I just made myself even MORE depressed than i was already today and let me tell you that’s not an easy thing to do. Great.


	15. Response to sunnyhomes "vacation"

It wasn’t his fault. Really. This _boy_ was now the fifth one of his entourage to find an excuse to walk up and talk to Ripley. 

Ripley, who was lying out in the sun next to him, clad in a bathing…suit that he had much preferred before it started attracting the attention of young men. And she was _next to him_. Clearly _with him_. She has an _engagement ring on_ for God’s sake… She’s politely turned down three, told one where he could stick the beer he offered her, and looked at the last one, then back to her lover, and back to the boy with an almost _coquettish_ voice: “Pity, but I have someone already.”

At Christopher’s distressed expression she offered up an explanation that did little for his nerves or self esteem.

 _“_ What? I’m taken, not blind.”

“He looked your type.”

“Don’t get jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“You are.”

“I can’t _get_ jealous.”

“Well, supposed you can’t get jealous, happy, sad, loving, excited, hopeful, depressed, or hor–”

“Alright fine, I’m jealous but–good lord here comes another one…”

“It’s spring break season, there’s going to be a lot more guys around than usual, who are more desperate than usual.”

he mumbles something about how they should have gone camping again like she wanted to (until Ripley found out that he had never seen the ocean in person), and Amanda chuckled under her breath. 

“ _Babe_ , you would really prefer a tent to the hotel?”

“I don’t have to worry about losing you to a raccoon or bobcat.”

“And you don’t have to worry about losing me to _anyone_ let alone these morons,” the latest moron of course was walking up to Ripley, following their volleyball that had gone astray ‘accidentally’ as the others watched. 

Amanda would have just kicked it down into the ocean, and watched gleefully as the half-drunk group stumbled into the surf to catch it, but Christopher rose from his chair, somehow seeming more imposing than he had in a while, and though he wasn’t a full head taller than the undergrad, he appeared to tower over him. He knelt, picked up the runaway ball, and squeezed it with one hand as he stood back up. Amanda looked over her sunglasses impressed; he’d gouged through the thing to the point of it being irreparable.

“I’m sorry,” he said, with a factory-fresh voice to the guy. “I seem to have forgotten my own strength for a moment. But it looks like your little game will have to be over now. Such a shame. Now that you have no excuse to hover around and harass us, please would you and your friends _kindly piss off?”_

The kid stumbled backwards before retreating to his group, and must have said something, as they all retreated back from the direction they came form (Hell, most likely, just as the seagulls did, or so Samuels was beginning to think.)

“That was fun.”

“Glad to be a source of amusement,” the sarcasm she was met with would have been more fitting a reaction to the hot one rather than the last kid, who had exuded a sense of ‘has four brain cells three of which are keeping his body alive.’

“They’re just assholes. The waitress last night was nice to us. The guy at the front desk at the hotel is nice to us. Either not everyone recognizes you, or they accept you for what you are _as they should_.”

“Rare exceptions, no one thinks that–”

“What they think doesn’t matter. And no, they should think better of you, they should be nicer to you, but its their loss, they’re missing out on one of the best people I’ve ever known.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry for… My behavior.”

“Understandable. But believe it. I’d rather spend the night in with you doing chores than a night clubbing with those guys.”

“Even the one with the long hair?”

“Yes, even against that one.”

“Good becuase I think he’s coming back over,”

“Jesus I thought they all left?!” A quick look over her shoulder confirmed it, the good-looking one walking back over, towel slung over one shoulder, cooler presumably full of liquor in one hand. “Chris? Sit down her for a second,”

At this point he was capable of disobeying suggestions and gentle orders. Which meant he could have said no. And at this point he knew his beloved as well as he knew anything and knew _exactly_ what she was going to do. Which all meant that despite everything conscious in him saying that he didn’t approve of her next move, going by logic, he had to have consented to the idea on some level.

He wasn’t on her towel for three seconds when she rolled on top of him, in a wonderful feign of a sudden sense of romance rather than a display to suggest the small pack of mangey wild dogs to hunt elsewhere, she kissed him, parted lips against his own, and clung tight to him as she had never done in public before.

Coming up for air, she could see that even the last of them were gone, that the lifeguard hadn’t come over to tell them off for inappropriate levels of PDA, and they were still on a nice beach, in the late afternoon with lovely weather. Still time and place enough to relax. 


	16. Ask: Who hits the tourist traps?

CHRISTOPHER IS A SUCKER FOR CHEESY TOURIST TRAPS. He doesn’t get it; he doesn’t _know_. Ripley’s seen it all on TV or postcards or retrofuturistic facebook. On Luna, the side facing earth is declared a national park; preserving the look of the moon; on the darkside, where Tranquility is (shut up I know the sea of tranquility isn’t on the darkside but fuck canon I want to keep the moon) there’s a huge casing over the original foot prints from the first moon landing and they’re a mASSIVE TOURIST TRAP.

Ripley HATES holidays becuase EVERYONE from Earth or the colonies wants to come see a damn footprint in the dirt. Okay, sure, it was cool for ten seconds the first time she saw it in person but holy fuck the _traffic_ and the _crowds_.

They’re back on Luna, and starting to function as people again after Things Happened at Sevastapol, and Christopher gets tour tickets for them as a surprise date and Ripley is less than enthused when he shows them to her. His face falls, he _tried so hard_ , he did his best–he hardly knows her, which scares him to think about–and she cringed.

“It’s fine, really. Just…so many people.”

“I-I could change them for a different time, earlier when they’re not as busy?” Amanda smiles as brightly as she can summon, trying to cheer him back up a little. She’ll sit through the stupid trolly tour of the city she knows like the back of her hand, of the USCM base that she _worked in_ , of the moon landing site and the stupid footprints becuase it’ll make him happy, and maybe they could use a date. Besides, he’s never seen them. And she’s never seen him so excited. Like one of the gawking tourists, and its _cute_.


	17. Ship asks for Ripuels & Dani/Walter

**Ripley and Samuels**

  * **Who said “I love you” first**



Samuels, but it wasn’t intentional, so much out of confusion. Three days into the strange liminal world of the ride home, of feeling like he came back from oblivion, of the strange impossible way that Ripley was treating him. By the night that she told him that she cared about him…

“I don’t know what level of emotion I’m capable of–or that what I’m feeling really is emotion, or just how…sentient I can be. But ever since I found your file, and when I met you–more now–I think I might love you.”

“….I know. I know you do,” she smiles at him, tries to show the affection that she can’t say with words. It’s not that she doesn’t love him, but she has issues saying it becuase she’s lost every single person that she’s ever said it to.

  * **Who would have the other’s picture as their phone background**



Both, but Ripley’s a lying liar who lies and tells everyone that her lock-screen of 1970′s drag racer is her background too. She’s not into that sappy gross romantic crap. Nope. Not her.

  * **Who leaves notes written in fog on the bathroom mirror**



Ripley, and they’re usually…..crass. It wasn’t an issue until the time she let Zula crash on their couch, and Zula came out to see the remnants of her last message to Christopher: two stick figures and a couple choice words in a great big heart. 

“RIPLEY.”

  * **Who buys the other cheesy gifts**



Both. Samuels is one to bring home flowers, and when Amanda tries to get him to stop ( _It’s such a waste, they only last a little while…)_ he starts bringing home, once a week/fortnight something ridiculous. Novelty magnets for her rolling toolbox, plush animals, dorky ‘just becuase i love you’ cards, a little cake for two once that said ‘YOU’RE LOVELY’ on it.

Amanda bought him (well, both of them) a set of Star Wars mugs, one with Han and one with Leia, that said ‘I love you’ and ‘I know.’ Samuels uses the Leia ‘I love you’ one, Amanda uses the Han ‘I know’ one.

  * **Who initiated the first kiss**



Samuels, he’s only ever seen kisses on screen ( _rarely_ , when granted access to unsecured wifi. Though its technically in his mental display, not on a screen), demure greeting kisses between employees and their spouses or by people outside. Chaste. So, when Ripley doesn’t back away when he moves closer to her in the doorway of his cabin, when she _smiles_ instead almost daring him, certainly encouraging him, he merely presses his closed lips to hers, not knowing any of the details, or really how much more to the act there is. 

a note/spoiler from the current fic: he was IN NO WAY prepared for much tongues are used in kissing.

  * **Who kisses the other awake in the morning**



Samuels being the one that a) doesn’t normally need sleep, and b) is instantly awake rather than sluggish as a human is, is normally the one to kiss his partner in the morning. He’s found that an amorous and tired Amanda is _slightly_ easier to coax out of bed than a miserably tired one is.

  * **Who starts tickle fights**



Amanda, in an attempt to find out how and where he’s ticklish. So far, nothing, and she’s convinced that he’s shutting off nerve sensitivity when she tries it, but he’ll never confess to it.

  * **Who asks who if they can join the other in the shower**



Amanda did the first time. Right after escaping Actual Hell, she was covered in her blood, Joe blood, alien slime, sweat, dirt, and possibly the blood of other humans. Shower. She calms down enough to try and zap some life back into the synthetic’s batteries, to stick wires directly into his brain and reboot him, praying to whatever might bother listening to a mass-murderer that he’ll come to and be himself when he does. A

fter he’s awake, able to stand and focus, after they’re both in quiet fearful shock for a while, she realizes that she’ll have to shower. She tugs his arm in the direction of the narrow stall, and he kept on his boxers and undershirt, mostly there to be sure that she was alright, uninjured, not about to hurt herself by accident or on purpose. 

Despite his modesty, Amanda gave up, and stripped completely, lasting hardly a full minute under the scathingly hot water before she started sobbing uncontrollably. Samuels didn’t know what to do, but offered the only thing that he had–and arguably he didn’t even _own_ the thing–himself. Arms opened to her, she immediately sought some kind of comfort and support there. Eventually as she calmed down he tried to wash her hair a little, until she started to do so herself, still trying to run his hands firmly but gently over her, not to grope but to feel for injuries. 

  * **Who surprises the other in the middle of the day at work with lunch**



Answered this with a mini-fic already for these two.

  * **Who was nervous and shy on the first date**



Amanda. Their first date was technically after they’d be living together for weeks–more if you count cryo. By the time they settled back into ‘normal life’ and knew more about the person they blindly ended up falling for, Christopher suggested…..a date. 

“We’ve already had a lot,”

“I meant out, let me take you to a nice dinner, a walk along the city main street at night. Wine and roses. All of it.”

“You…romantic…. _sap_. I’m in.”

It sounded nicer in theory, but once they were there, Amanda noticed she was _wildly_ underdressed; eyeliner and mascara only. Clean jeans and the nicest shirt she owned, a dark red sweater that she realized too late washed out whatever iota of color she had. Meanwhile her lover cleaned up exceptionally well; slacks and a button down shirt that was _begging_ to be undone, the leather jacket she picked out for him instead of a work jacket, and no tie. He looked gorgeous, with his movie-star perfect smile and factory-fresh voice. She felt like she didn’t belong at this place at all, not with these women in cocktail dresses and business suits, not with the live quartet and drastic view of the Earth-rise. 

Her nerves weren’t helped by the fact that her date _ordered in French like seriously what the hell was she doing here???_

  * **Who kills/takes out the spiders**



they both do; Christopher becuase he still has lingering programming that makes it difficult for him to rationalize hurting a living being, and Amanda because she is, despite her countenance, a very kindhearted person.

  * **Who loudly proclaims their love when they’re drunk**



That would be the only one that can get drunk.

Samuels long gave up on trying to keep their trips to her favorite dive bar calm; considering their typical night out there included at least two drinks for her, but usually three or four, and the last time they were there Amanda got very drunk and very loud and very handsy, and at one point, with Zula snickering behind her with a few other onlookers, as he tried to tell her politely to calm down, and was answered with:

“ _Chrisssstopher you smoooth bastard I LO-VE YOU.”_

It was not easily forgotten by any of the present parties.

**Dani and Walter**

  * **Who said “I love you” first**



Dani did. Walter wasn’t sure that he meant it, and since he wasn’t sure, his programming wouldn’t allow him to say it on the possibility that it could be a lie.

  * **Who would have the other’s picture as their phone background**



Neither. Walter’s form is a much more popular model than the Samuels one would be; seeing as at this point yet in development _all_ synthetics shared the same form regardless of role or purpose. If someone were to find her phone they’d be very confused as to why she had an image of one as the background. As for Walter, unlike some other synthetics, he’s too pragmatic about the fact that he is what he is to bother carrying a phone.

  * **Who leaves notes written in fog on the bathroom mirror**



Walter. Dani used to do it for Jacob, and it became one of those little things from her preivous marriage that…she just couldn’t reincorporate into this relationship. It was _their_ little thing. She doesn’t mind the little hearts that Walter leaves for her, but she can’t do it in return.

  * **Who buys the other cheesy gifts**



As much as Dani’s upset over the idea that Walter owned literally _nothing_ , she does love the opportunity to get him gifts; little things ranging from nice shirts to knick-knacks to a plush animal.

“This is a children’s toy,”

“Yes?”

“Is this your way of telling me that you would like a child?”

“No! No, Walter, it’s…It’s for you.”

“Why?”

“I have the stuffed dolphin my dad got me, and I couldn’t think of anything that would suit you better, so I went with the generic.”

“Thank you.”

“A lot of humans keep things from when they were kids. It helps them feel safe. Or they keep them packed away for their kids or nieces, nephews, or just to remind themselves.” Like so many other human things, its lost on him, but he takes it nonetheless, and the next morning when Dani gets out of the shower to see their bed made, she smiles at the site of the plush dog sitting on top of their pillows.

  * **Who initiated the first kiss**



Dani again. It takes Walter a long time to get to the level of full sentience that Samuels was already at when he came across Ripley the first time. Dani respects that, and tries not to worry when he seems to be plateauing. Once he got to a point when she knew he could tell her no if he wished to, she carefully kissed his cheek, as she had been doing for some time, and at his small smile, she kissed him on the mouth very carefully.

  * **Who kisses the other awake in the morning**



Once kissing is on the table, Walter seeks to kiss her whenever he can, for so many reasons, trying to keep her happy, establish intimacy and affection, to let her know that he enjoys it, to maintain this bizarre thing that they have. Even before they mutually agreed that he should join her at night, he would still kiss her in the morning, sometimes before she was fully awake.

Thankfully, he kisses very differently than her deceased husband, and she’s never been confused at waking to find Walter instead of Jacob.

  * **Who starts tickle fights**



Walter again. He isn’t ticklish at all, but Dani is, and the one time he accidentally realized that she was, he uses it to lighten her mood when she’s down.

  * **Who asks who if they can join the other in the shower**



Dani. She’s always careful to phrase even suggestions as questions instead of orders so that he can say no if he wants, and she asked him in at least three different ways if he felt like joining her, but each was met with a firm yes before he got in with her. 

  * **Who surprises the other in the middle of the day at work with lunch**



Walter, but again, he’s an easily recognized model, and cannot show any kind of care beyond professional to her.

  * **Who was nervous and shy on the first date**



Dani, Walter doesn’t really get nervous, at least not in anyway that it shows, and he _absolutely_ isn’t shy about _anything_. Dani however is hyper-aware that she’s human with human flaws and worries about it.

  * **Who kills/takes out the spiders**



Walter becuase he’s the softest thing in the galaxy

  * **Who loudly proclaims their love when they’re drunk**



Dani, seeing as Walter cannot get drunk. Luckily she has only done this so far in front of Tennessee and his wife, who were long used to drunk-Dani nonsense.


	18. Who surprises the other in the middle of the day at work with lunch?

Adjusting to normality included going back to work. The pay-out from Weyland-Yutani was enough that she didn’t _need_ to ask for her shop back at the docks, however after a case of cabin fever combined with post-traumatic stress sent her into a mental breakdown, her (partner? boyfriend? lover?) suggested she find something to occupy her mind and hands, and possibly get her outside.

It was surreal, being back here after so long away, after so much happened. Here, the private engine shop that serviced everything from cars to crater rovers to flight carriers and segments of space stations, the biggest changes that happened since she had left was that their boss retired, and they hired a new electrical engineer. Oh yes, and they were all rather excited to tell her about the new lift. Utterly mundane.

Still, it was something to do, something to focus on and think on, and throwing herself into her work had always been how she worked through her earlier (though much more minor) issues. The new boss was a previous team member who liked her enough, and everyone welcomed her back with relative warmth. And coming home the first day to someone who had–against orders–made a nice dinner and procured a bottle of wine; followed by a back rub that she wasn’t sure made her more relaxed or more awake than she’d been all evening.

Ripley’s first two weeks went by as such, sometimes having to be nearly pulled out of bed by her well-meaning resident robot. By Friday he noticed, however, that while she always had a piece of toast, or handful of whatever fruit she could find (”Why do you do this to me?” “You don’t eat enough vegetable material and cannot survive off pad thai and pizza alone.” “I did so far and turned out–well, I’m alive aren’t I?”) and _always_ a large mug of some kind of caffeinated drink. Once to his horror she had poured a bottle of emergency energy shot into her travel cup with a soda, and walked out the door as if it was a _normal_ thing for her to do. Considering the level of soda left in the fridge, he realized that she’d been taking one to work each day; but the more he looked over their supply he realized that unless she was buying lunch on her break, she had been having a can of diet soda every day.

* * *

“Ripley? Someone’s looking for you,” the kid, one of the newer employees, gave her a cautions glance. _He’s mildly afraid of me. Good._ “Looks like a guy from the company.”

“Jesus fuck.”

She sat up, turned off her welding torch and took her mask off, debating between preparing to defend herself, or to just start a loud profanity laced tirade against whatever demon they sent to her.

Instead, she was greeted by a much better scenario entirely.

“Chris,” she sighed. “You’re a cliche.”

“In my defense I didn’t think that you would have been welding on the dock’s electric again. Haven’t they replaced it?”

“Apparently not,” she nodded to an older patch job, about seven feet down where this scene had played out two years ago. “And not that I don’t like seeing your face, but….why are you here?”

“I brought you lunch.”

“You didn’t have to do that,”

“Did you pack lunch?”

“I–”

“A can of coke doesn’t count.”

“Okay so no, but you always cook dinner so I’m fine, really. I prefer to work while everyone else is on break anyway.” she wiped her arm over her forehead, in an attempt to clean up some of the soot and sweat, only succeeding in spreading the grim and adding oil to the mess. Samuels bit back an amused smile. 

“Too late, I already walked here–”

“You _walked_ , that’s like…it’s a fifteen minute commute by trolley how the fuck–”

“My batteries last a little longer than a human’s.”

“……right.”

“And it’s already on your break room table, if you’d like to take your legally required thirty minute break now.”

“Company man to the core processor aren’t you?” she teased lightly, bumping his hip with hers as she walked past him and enjoying the half-second of flustered bewilderment it earned.

The break room table had a steaming bowl of oatmeal that didn’t look like the lumpy instant kind she usually bought, and a plate of various fresh fruits beside it.

“I had fruit this morning,”

“And the suggested amount for a female of your age and activity level is more than one strawberry on your way out the door,”

“I’m not a child,”

“Looking after your health isn’t a way of belittling you, at least not intentionally. I merely want to keep you around for as long as I can.”

 _Oh_. That was sobering.

“How about I promise to pay more attention to my diet and you agree not to micromanage my phsyical health?”

“Agreed,” Amanda sat down at the table, giving his latest creation a hesitant taste, knowing full well it wouldn’t have the three spoons of sugar she usually dumped in hers. None. Still, it wasn’t bad, and she was torn between asking where he learned to cook so well, and not wanting to see his sheepish smile when he, in a guilty tone, mumbled something about just downloading the instructions. 

“Any good?”

“Very, thanks. Sit down, stay a while before you hike back,” 

“….Thank you,”

“You didn’t just thank me for asking you to stay with me?”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever fully adjust to you permitting, _requesting_ my company.”

“Mmm, the adoration is nice now, but it’s gonna get stale quick. Adjust. Get used to it. I told you before that I’m keeping you–until you decide you want to leave. And then please, leave. But for now…” she smiled. “I like the view, and would like you. To. Stay.”

Amanda started to eat, no longer embarrassed at doing so in front of someone that didn’t need to, and Samuels reached across the table for her hand that wasn’t holding a spoon, another marvel, that _he_ could request her touch, and she would grant it with a smile. 

“The last time I was here, I wanted to touch you–oh that sounded…wrong. I meant in a…in the way a human would perhaps give a touch, social contact to give you comfort but even if my programming allowed me to do it…You gave off the sense that you would have broken my hand if I tried.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I love you.”

It didn’t shock her, didn’t surprise her in the least; once he had managed to say the words without stuttering, or outwardly panicking, he had been saying it at random moments, at least once a day. And each time he did it, it still seeped in and sent an icy heat through her. A reminder of the impossibleness that she wasn’t, as she always assumed she was, destined for isolation.

“There’s a supply closet in that door behind me.”

“Relevance?”

“Never mind,” there wasn’t enough time left to her break anyway, but the look he was giving her was melting her from the inside, and even if it wasn’t for sex, she wanted to hide somewhere with him, holding him close and tight, feeling his vitals hum under his skin _he’s alive and he’s with me and we are safe, he’s alive, he’s here, we’re safe._

Someone in the main area of the shop starting a metal saw made her jump, and Samuels sprung up from his seat to reach over table, his hands on her shoulders “Easy, luv…”

“Sorry–I’m sorry nothing’s bothered me yet–I was just zoning out and I–”

“I worry about you. I know you’re safe here, but…I still worry.”

“We’re a mess.”

“At least, for me, a synthetic could probably think of very few people to ‘be a mess with’ than an engineer. I’ve lucked out in every possible way.” he was perched on the side of the table to her right, one hand still on her shoulder, moving up to hold the side of her face.

“I have too. No one’s ever brought me homemade lunch at work before,” she pushed the bowl and plate aside, and sat up next to him, impressed the metal retired-worktable could hold them both. “I’m doing something nice for you tonight. Message me what kind of wine you want, or tea, or beer, or whatever you want. And then anything you can think of, I’ll do it.”

“You don’t have to,” he said softly, as she rest her forehead against his, their noses brushing before she kept hers to one side of his,

“Not just physical; I mean _anything_. Any movie you want, any updates, upgrades, decor for the flat…Let me do something for you,”

“It isn’t necessary,”

“Please?”

“I’d like…us to read tonight together, maybe work the micro-generator you brought home last week, take a bath, and then you can tell me about this place, and about your first job here,” 

her eyes crinkled a little, where confusion would be on its own with anyone else wanting to know specifics, there was also affection, and an annoying inability to hide her sheer joy at having a connection with another person. Even someone that few others would consider to be a person.

“Why in the world would you care about that?”

“I only know your past on paper, passive and one-sided, told by people that neither liked you nor knew you. And thus far, my dear, every time you display another facet of yourself, I find that my ability to care is only made…stronger. I like that feeling, and both selfishly, and for your own sake, I want to know everything about you that you could share,”

“Tonight….then tonight…like an interview then. You and me.” She leaned on him, and he leaned back with her, supported on the table by his free arm.

“‘Interview is rather clinical, so correct me if I’m wrong but couldn’t ‘learning more about one’s partner’ be considered a date?”

“Well you’re supposed to have those before you move in with someone.”

“I had no idea,” his sarcasm entertained her to no end, if only for how long it had taken her to realize he was capable of it.

“Now you do, and we have a date tonight.”

* * *

“Thompson?”

“Yeah?” 

“Who’s in there with Ripley? Boyfriend?”

“Company exec. I think he’s just a ‘droid though, so it can’t be anything too serious.”

“In that case go in and get her, then kick him out. I don’t like those things–or those people–crawling around my shop poking for code violations.”

“Will do.”


	19. Prompt: Kissing so desperately their body curves into the other's?

They’d already had their goodbyes.

Their rescuers had thought they’d done right by taking them straight to a company station, and this close to it, short of killing their saviors, there was nothing Amanda could do to stop them. Besides, she thought, the absolute saint she’s been spending her time with would never approve of murder.

Two blessed weeks of peace with the only other survivor of the disaster hadn’t done much to heal her physically or mentally, and maybe the mental damage was how she got into this in the first place. 

This, being the position of having taught a synthetic over the course of four days _exactly_ how to kiss like a human. Desperation? Possible. A sense of a lifedebt she’d never be able to pay back? More possible. The chance thats she might have actually found someone–the first someone in four years? …possible. Too possible, going by the way they had spent the last night in a tangle, her half-wishing she’d have asked him days ago if he’d want to try anything more than kissing, touching; and half being glad that she didn’t, not wanting to cheapen this short-lived love story into a post-disaster hook up. ( _love? That isn’t what this is, I hardly_ know _the guy…)_ Still they’d said as much, among other ridiculous empty promises of houses, of running, of human elopement.

* * *

“They can’t take you,” she said to him across the table in an otherwise empty galley. Less than one hour until docking.

“They own me, it’s in their rights. Besides I’m….I’m not running up to par, and if they want to interrogate me they’ll have to repair me first.”

“That doesn’t sound promising. They’ll rip you’re memory out and—They’re going to trash you. Like a used plastic bottle.”

“And perhaps I’ll be recycled into something you come into contact with,” he wasn’t used to joking, and figured that if this didn’t work to make her smile from humor, he’d remarket it as maudlinly romantic.

“Don’t.”

“Amanda?” she looked like she was was using serious will-power to avoid crying. Either that, or trying to get herself to cry after having exhausted herself with tears the past fortnight.

“And if they kill me? Tell me I’m crazy and get me locked away?”

“Not…to detract from your horrors but…They won’t, it sounds absurd and if the station power failed, and it wrecked, and you survived then, if you told news outlets or journals the company could dismiss it as PTSD, or another form of stress and trauma.” if he didn’t know that she would be safe, he would have killed everyone on the ship himself. She technically was his temporary owner, the only one giving orders that he had to obey, and he could harm humans only if doing so protected they who were in charge of him.

“Doesn’t help you though; they’ll wipe you memory at best.”

“Still….If they don’t decommission me, even I have no recollection of any of this…” hesitantly he reached his hand across the table, breaking their agreement that any kind of contact was best kept to their little cabin.”Would you find an excuse to come and visit?”

The tears started, but she wasn’t crying when she accepted his hand and squeezed it tight.

“I’ll do you one better and I’ll steal you.” he smiles at her becuase he cannot physically cry, and it helps her feel a grain of hope that she was sure was worthless. 

It was possible that just sitting there, staring at their entwined hands, their similarities and subtle differences in weight, in texture, in fingerprints could have been a waste of time. Ripley automatically defaulted to gestures of human comfort, firmer grasp, thumb gently caressing the back of his hand, and Samuels recognized through the actions and her expression that these were as much for his comfort as hers, and thought that mirroring the action might further help them both. 

He liked the subtle pulse in her fingers, and the strength of it at her wrist. His own was there, but less to provide oxygen and more to provide a much needed lubricant to his joints and muscle structure, as well as a cooling system he, when in working order, could mostly control. 

Another few minutes passed before the lights on the message board blinked in orange letters ‘CAUTION: DOCKING’

“That’s it then.” she said, letting go of her grip on him slowly, and then pulling away all at once to avoid reaching back and never giving up.

“For now,” he stood up from the table, walked around to meet her, and Ripley didn’t want to tell him how much of a mistake that was. The rough _thud_ of docking, a movement which both were used to enough that neither lost balance or even broke eye contact. “Better you stay here…I’ll go on and talk with the representatives first. We’ll tell them you remember little, and they may let you go with few or no questions.” 

“They’re going to let you go. They _have_ to.”

“Amanda,” he looked at her with an affection that, despite all his pretty words, she didn’t think he was capable of. “Even if everything went as planned, flawless and even, and you found that your mother died peacefully in cryosleep, that you could finally sleep at night knowing, for good or ill, the truth. I would still be returning to them, moving onto the next mountain of files, to the next task or mission they set me to.”

“They shouldn’t–”

“Do you know what becomes of sentient androids? You couldn’t have thought I was the only one…if I am, indeed sentient. It’s a strange concept to try and evaluate for oneself.”

“No I don’t but–you are. You _are_ real and alive and they can’t _own_ –”

“They know that. That’s why we’re all examined before we leave the lab. I don’t recall too much, but I remember seeing some–there was a gap in the floor. They were called–as was I–to stand on it. We had our vitals monitored on a datapad wirelessly, were asked a few questions, and some of them fell though, what I assume was a chute. Most of us, myself included, weren’t afraid, but it was always the ones that looked afraid that ended up going through. They _know_. They know they couldn’t keep making their own synthetics if word got out about sentience; it’d stir up a whole new political mess and they’re already fighting property and international colonization laws.”

“W _hat the genuine fuck_? What about you now–did you just—get away? And what if they find out about you? Do they know?”

“I-I don’t know. At some point I realized I was….as you put it in simplest if not the most accurate of terms ‘alive’ and I hid it. And if they let me go on, I will continue to hide it.”

“I’ll buy you then.”

“I don’t think they’ll part with someone who’s witnessed their plans unfold and fail. Even if they would, I don’t know how you’d talk them into handing over ownership with the price for used synthetics running at–” Ripley cringed. They as a human race were beyond this by three hundred years. Two hundred in some places, but they were _past_ this. “If you have any inkling of letting me remain a figure in your life in any capacity it’s best you come to terms with it.”

“It’s fucking stupid. It’s evil.” she could hear people moving around outside the galley, they might only have a few minutes, and though they had already done it, already spent 12 hours in their cabin saying goodbye, both with and without words, but _fuck this_. If they were going to take him back anyway _back already_ she didn’t care if some of the salvagers caught them together. 

“Amanda?”

“No _shit_ I would want you to remain ‘a figure in my life’ I’m still–I _will_ find some way that I–,” she levered herself up on her toes, he was on the tall side but so was she and in her work boots the difference was just inches; tilting aside to kiss him, the line of his mouth set in confusion for nearly a full second (ages, for his processing speed). She stood strong as she could, knowing (something she teased him for not two days ago) that he was much easier made weak in the knees than she was, but when he rest his hands on her hips (no lower, no higher) she delicately slipped her tongue past his lips, gentle and reverent, his response is to _melt_ against her, and she stumbles a moment at the weight, holding tight around his neck and leaning right back into him, hoping the movement balances them. She pulls away half a moment, to catch short breaths between light and quick kisses over his jaw.

“I believe you,” his whisper was not voiceless and airy as a human’s but his own voice played from a much lower volume. “I believe _in_ you.”

“They won’t take you far,” her reply gave him turn to mimic her little kisses, tracing the same pattern she had pressed onto him, but he kept trailing hers down her neck, “Will they?”

“I don’t know,”

“You’re not getting taken from me too. Not again, and not you.” the language caught him off guard; her anger replaced from being aimed at those who left her over the span of her short life, to being aimed at those who _caused_ the leaving. It was small, and maybe only a weight of meaning that she put on this single interaction, but it still said lengths about her viewpoint’s shift, and perhaps that included a bit of healing. Perhaps not closure, but continuation, despite everything else that he’d done to her, dragged her into, and now subjected her to this emotional pain, selfishly enjoying every last touch and word that he could share with this incredible being before–

“…..Amanda.”

“What?”

“They’re going to want to view my memories.”

“Yeah, but how is—”

“My memories that include the past four days, and the past twenty-four hours specifically.”

“oh _fuck_.”


	20. random nsfw-ish reply

“Try,”

“I-I can’t do that,”

“Full consent given, what more does your coding need?”

“I don’t know, but its not going to let me initiate anything,”

“But you _aren’t_ , I’m asking you to. That’s the start isn’t it?” 

he wants to try, wants to lift her up and carry her to bed, and forget for an hour that they’re not going to grow old together. An hour of them being the only two people–the only _humans_ –in the universe. Any time alone with her was enough, and maybe in a few months, years, decades that sense will wear away, but the newness of affection and the _strength_ of it both scared him and gave off the most secure messages to all his alert-programs that usually just led to anxiousness. This ridiculous human woman in one of his standard-issue crew-neck shirts, his boxers, and a sympathetic pout.

Reaching a hand out to her felt like a small, pathetic little victory and she immediately put her own in it. Lifting her hand with both of his, he kissed each of her fingertips softly, hearing her soft exhale. 

“Don’t stress it, but I think that if you tried, you could start it. At least by now,”

“Possibly…it’s been a couple weeks…” gently he tugged her closer by her arm, wrapping his around her, resting his head down at her shoulder.

“And I lost track after the third time,”

“Twenty seven,” he mumbled into her neck.

“Wait what,” she stepped back from him.

“That is in total, not mutual orgasm, and my sincerest apologies that the number is significantly lower, I’ll learn–”

“ _IT HAS BEEN TWO WEEKS.”_

 _“_ Is it unusual?”

“Oh my God I’m a rabbit–I’m sorry, that’s–”

“–I could have told you no at any moment.” his lips curl slightly into a smile through his stress before kissing her forehead.

“I. Am. A rabbit.” she said, horrified.

“A very cute rabbit,” Christopher shrugged unsure what else to say to refute.


	21. One of you deviants asked: "Ripules and fetishes go."

WELL THEN.

*pours a whiskey*

Start with the easier one to explain: Samuels doesn’t know _shit_. Amanda had to corrupt the poor bot (not that he didn’t literally ask her to). He doesn’t have (yet) any specific turn ons. He isn’t even sure he _works_ that way. Thus far he’s controlled all functions himself, nothing really works or doesn’t work on its own. Now, his partner still enjoys trying it; she tries to grind on him when he _meant_ for them to _slow dance_ in their living room; reaches under the covers, grins like a cat, and strokes him.

“I don’t require it,”

“Does it feel good?”

“You don’t have to do anything, if you’d like to start–”

“ _Does it feel good_?”

“….Yes.”

“Then I’m going to keep doing it.” 

Touch is so new to him that he adores it in any form; finds it fascinating that he has a want for touch though he lacks the hormones that drive humans to reproductive actions. There’s very little he _doesn’t_ enjoy, but nothing specific. 

If you asked Amanda, however, what got his gears going, she’d immediately answer “He likes me on top.” 

Only _once_ thus far has he reacted without control, and that was when Ripley struggles to explain with a straight face what she meant when she told him: “If you’re too busy with that stack of data sheets, I will do this myself and not let you join in when you decide to come to bed.” So…So she just…showed him what she meant instead. And did end up letting him join in, about as near to begging as Amanda Ripley would ever allow herself to get.

AS FOR HER….Amanda does not have a thing for androids. NOPE. She doesn’t. She’s half afraid that she does, between her lover and Data, but _he just doesn’t count_. Neither of them do. Sentience is a pre-req for her to go to bed with anyone, therefore she does not have a robot fetish. NOPE. Dirty talk worked on her when she was a little younger, but her new housemate is so…. Vulgarity doesn’t suit him. He’s naturally a gentleman, with a smoothness–despite the shyness–that she didn’t think he had in him. 

Once at Samuels new job, far from WY and anyone who’s ever worked with synths, there was an office party (he doesn’t get it, he just doesn’t; these are lame obligatory bullshit events and _she doesn’t own a dress_ and you do not want me there I’m going to embarrass you) and Amanda was getting increasingly uncomfortable; both of them were feeling…less than confident since so many there were shocked they were together. _She looks young, too hot for him damn_. Ripley saw the looks that said clearly _what is someone like that doing with a grunt like her_? No last-minute dress and hastily chosen lipstick could hide that. So. Contact. Hand holding so people stopped asking if they were together, and also for comfort. Eyes meeting over glasses, small smiles at various things others said; the two already had a myriad of private jokes, a mostly-shared sense of humor with them. 

Then his arm slips around her waist, she mirrors his action, their backs to the wall, she sneaks in a pinch and he startles. 

“ _whywouldyoudothathere?”_

 _“_ You look tense. Want to find an empty office?”

“Yes I’m tense I—what? nO no I do not want to find–”

“OOOOh! _Your_ office. I want to see it.”

“Not now you aren’t.” 

Damn his self control to hell, but a night of subtleties and seeing him in that suit and seeing him behave so _human_ , and then their increased flirting and Amanda… _he’s got to know what I’m thinking_. On cue he hands her another glass of—-ice water.

“Please, luv, you look like a cat ready to pounce, cool off a little,” a sly glance at those who had been standing near them, assurance no one is looking, then a kiss below her ear and a low voice: “Wait until we get home. I promise I’ll see to it that its worth the wait.”

“You bastard.” the jab earned her another, decidedly chaster kiss on the forehead and a smile that made her unsure if she wanted to tear out his central power cable, or say to hell with the audience and make an effort to get him to the floor. 

Neither was a good choice at the moment. And its not her fault, she rationalizes, not her fault some pervert at WY made a robot that could do what he could do. Not her fault that who or whatever they modeled him after fit her like none of her previous male partners did, like whoever designed him _made him for her_ or very nearly. 

Certainly not her fault that like all other functions, he could keep at it indefinitely if he wished, and as often as he wished, with little to no wait. Or that he had the ability to smile like that, or dance with her like this was eighteen-ninety-fucking-seven and _that smooth bastard_ pulled her close by her hips at the end, very close, too close, enough to feel that he–

“I’m going to void your warranty when we get home,”

“I look forward to it.”

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Am I?”

Cut to now; Ripley kissing him hard against the door of their apartment as he fumbles for the card-key, her hair a mess from having started this in the elevator; not sure how or when they got inside, but at some point he lost his jacket, and her dress is lifted over her head, and _why are we in the hallway_?

Some part of him was still aware, still knew that this wasn’t quite right, that he should have more control than this, but Ripley had pulled him by the necktie towards their room and the ended up on the hallway table. Or rather, she did. At moments. And she’s always a little vocal, enough that he knows when she’s enjoying his motions, but this is different, she’s vocal on her gasps, on the exhales as moans, even a pleased hum as she bites his shoulder, enough input for him to jolt back to senses, and _any more and you’re going to hurt her_.

He met her eyes for half a second,

“ _Harder_.”

One wall-lamp loosened, two picture frames on the floor, and three angry shouts from neighbors later, Ripley’s arms are slack around his neck; his still resting at her waist. He’s nearly certain that she’ll have bruises on her hips and backside…and her neck. For obvious reasons, he didn’t care to see bruises on her throat left by an android, even if the android in question was himself, and the bruises were tidy bite marks rather than clumsy chokeholds. 

“That….. happened.” he said.

“Do you want it to happen again?”

“I think I lost control at some point,”

“You didn’t hurt me,” far from it, he thinks, looking at her please smile.

“I could have.”

“You didn’t.” She looks down and notices.

Both of them still have their formal shoes on, and though its been opened, he’s still in his dress shirt too, trousers on the floor.

“I…I’m sorry for the…”

“Ripped-out-of-an-erotic fuck against a wall? Please do not apologize for that.” she says, gently poking his chest as she edges off of the table and to stand on uneasy legs (still in her high-heels) on the floor. Her intention was to help him with his clothes, and a sense of dignity, but maybe that wasn’t a good idea.

“You enjoyed it?”

“ _Hell yes_.”

“….You prefer intercourse…rougher?”

“Mmm sometimes. What did you think?”

“….I liked it.”

“A lack of control is scary…but its also nice sometimes. And I trust that you have some kind of protocol to back off before you actually hurt me. Trust yourself.”

“Everything you’ve been through, and you still trust me?”

“Unconditionally,” she answers without hesitation. “You want to try this?”

“Anatomically, I don’t think that this would work exactly the same in a reversed position.”

“I meant…do you want me to lead through it? Maybe…maybe in half an hour?”

“……yes.”

“That doesn’t sound very sure.”

“I am very sure, I’m merely unsure over how concerned I should be about the fact that I am.”

Amanda kissed him on the noes, laughing a little how his eyes crossed to focus in on her in confusion when she leaned in.

“You are the sweetest person I’ve ever met,” she took his hands and backed towards their room, a wide smile on her face.

“Half an hour you said?”

So Ripley likes it rough, and ocassionally on a wall. Sometimes.


	22. Prompt: Sleepwalking

The myriad of reasons that Ripley had for not moving her bed from the corner, and for insisting that her new housemate take the side closest to the room included but were not limited to: she was stubborn as hell and wouldn’t change her sleeping arrangements for anyone, she liked the idea of a sentient metal security wall between her and the door, Samuels “woke up” a lot earlier than she did (A LOT earlier), and then of course the _coziness_ of being in that little space between him and the wall above the heater vent.

It was helpful too, to Samuels, to know that she was always there. Sometimes snoring. Sometimes tossing and turning in her sleep and smacking him or kicking him, but it was easily worth it to know that during the only time of the day that she couldn’t protect herself, she was still safe. Also five-to-nine or so hours of partial power with Amanda asleep (usually calmly) at his side was boarding on the divine. 

Not that he would phrase it like that to her, as she would likely make a quip about him watching her sleep, poke him, call him a sap, kiss his neck or shoulder or cheek–whatever her lips were closest to, smile against his synthetic skin, possibly laugh a little in that way that makes him think he’s made a mistake until she rolls on top of him and sleepily says ‘I love you’ (about the only way that she can) as he hugs her tight to him—-aaaaaand maybe phrasing it like that to her would be a good idea.

“Amy?” 

silence.

Instead of her usual tired ‘hmmph?’ reply when he spoke to her at night, there was nothing, causing him to bolt out of partial power mode and scan the room. Nothing. No Amanda, but no sign of intruders either.

Bedroom door opened slightly, perhaps she just–no, the bathroom light was off, as was the water closet light but–there it was. Kitchen light over the sink.

“Amanda?”

“Hmmph..”

“It’s only me, luv.”

She turned the water off, dropping her glass in the sink–it sounded like it cracked but he’d deal with the mess in the morning–and turned to his general direction, her eyes half shut.

“Mmm said I’d go on t’stupid…the ship with the name…”

“Are you alright?” he reached out to steady her, gently at first, but on realizing how close she was to being completely unbalanced he held her firmer at the waist.

“oooooh noooo I ‘ere mmm I thought you were jus’ being…bein’ nice…”

“I was, I still am, let’s get you somewhere that you won’t fall over,”

He carefully tried to maneuver her back to their room, but after she didn’t seem pleased with–

“fucking hands off me…don’ care if you’re nice for a robot still a fucking ro….”

“Alright, I’m sorry about this,” before she could stop him, or even know _what_ to stop, he had her in his arms in a bridal carry. Not the first time he’d done it, but definitely the first time in these circumstances.

“what THE SHIT?!” she screamed, grasping tight to him when she noticed she wasn’t on her bed, or solid ground

“Are you awake yet?”

“What the fuck?!”

“You were sleep walking, I think.” _I hope_.

“If that’s how I got here then probably.” she no longer protested and he was easefully able to get her back to her spot on the bed.

“How did you get past me?”

“I don’t know. Fuck, I haven’t sleep walked since I was a kid. I’m sorry–what did I–”

“–Nothing too awful.”

“Good…good. I’m sorry I-I don’t know if it was the beer at dinner or my meds or–”

“Likely both in combination with the stress at work, are you sure you’re alright?”

“I’m fine. Are you?” she drew her knees up as she watched him get into bed next to her; still a bit of a novelty after a few months together.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“You’ve got that tone of voice that says you’re not fine.”

“It’s nothing, really. I was…worried to find you weren’t still here, then to see you sleepwalking, and some of what you said–”

“I knew it! What did I say? Really, I’m so sorry if–”

“You didn’t seem to recall…..much of anything since our initial meeting. Specifically the, ah, part where we–well ,that we were a ‘we’ at all.”

“Oh.”

“I understand; you would have had every right to be angry at me for trying to tough you had we not had a long established level of intimacy but–”

“Is that all that–”

“You said you didn’t care if I was nice for a robot. That I was still a robot.”

Amanda froze in place, her hand still six inches from his, it’s intended target.

“….You know I’d never say that.”

“Do you think it?”

“I’m not answering that. Not again.”

“Amy.”

“I don’t! I told you; you’re what you are, but you’re also human. I’m sorry it upset you. I won’t take my pills within the same 20 minutes as a grain alcohol again. Promise. And you _fucking know_ that I wouldn’t say _or_ think that.”

“Sorry-I know that, only–”

“I wouldn’t date a goddamn roomba; you’re a _person_ not a thing a ten year old can build in a construction kit.”

“You aren’t the only one that has… That gets worried.”

“I know.” she squeezed his hand, laid back down, and waited for an invitation to get any closer.

“It’s not that late yet; try to sleep,”

“Hold me so I can’t escape again?”

“Of course,” he smiled, and opened his arms to her.

“Thank you.”


	23. Names (again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Tell me about names. When is the first time Amanda calls Samuels Christopher? Or Chris? Does she stick with it? Does she go for pet names later? Talk to me.

Amanda was curled up on his bunk; Samuels at the little desk paging through papers that were in the same salvage pile as him, hoping to find documentation, proof, something, anything.

“Your name…it’s Christopher isn’t it?”

“Hmm?”

Amanda sits up, taking the blanket with her as she faces him; he reaches out a comforting hand to her shoulder. 

“I can’t–I don’t think calling you by your last name–…..” whatever was between them, this mostly silent exchange of small affections, and whatever that gentle kiss was between them when she saw him come-to on the work table.

“It is. Christopher. Every synth of my make and year is a Samuels but to my knowledge–to my ability to access limited records with the company–I’m the only Christopher.”

“Is Chris okay?”

“If you’d prefer it.”

“Amy.”

“What?”

“My mom and dad–and their parents when they were alive–they called me Amy. I don’t know how they got that out of Amanda but–”

“I like it,” his soft smile spoke more to his ability to prefer, to feel, to like, to…. “Amy.”

* * *

_………..several months later………_

“Honey I fixed the bike if you’d like to go for a drive with me,”

“Sure, luv, only if you’re wearing your helmet though,”

“Killjoy,”

“Dear I only want what’s safe for you,”

“I’ve been racing motorbikes and dirtbikes since before you were a circuit board.”

“And, _darling_ , I’d like to keep you around a little longer now that I’m more than just a circuit board.”

“Fine. Deal., but only if you wear your riding gear too,”

“I don’t need–”

“Nope, synthetic skin is just as easy to shred off on road contact as mine.”

“…..You only bought me the leather pants becuase you wanted to see me wearing leather pants.”

“And the jacket too. Gloves if you want. But yes to the pants and jacket.”


	24. nosy neighbor

“Oh, you have an android?” 

The girl at the desk looked no older than eighteen, but was wearing make up that Ripley hadn’t seen outside of neon clubs since her days on-planet. A runaway? A genius on Luna with a scholarship looking for pocket money? Apartment complex’s kid? Sizing people up had become habit.

“I….Not really he’s–”

“Can I be of service?” Amanda’s jaw clenched. Alright, sure, Samuels had a good point. Their life was going to be so much easier _in some ways_ if no one knew…if people didn’t…She didn’t give a fuck, if he wanted to lift her up and carry her bridal style to their flat’s front door, kissing her to announce to everyone that he’s not her fucking _servant_ she would have been happier for it, and her theory was that eventually, so would he. 

“Well, I mean–now that you mention it, I bought a new climate unit for the ceiling, and I can’t get it up there on my own, and the maintenance crew only comes in on first and third Mondays, so–” she immediately turned to Ripley, who was getting increasingly awkward feeling. “I’ll pay you for his time; I could never afford a service to come out–”

“No need to pay _me_ for it but–”

“I can do it. When is your shift over?”

“Around seven. Ms. Ripley I have your flat’s phone on file, could I call when I’m off?” 

“Um, sure.” Ripley mumbled before nodding towards her companion, “Samuels lets go; I want to make dinner yet.”

* * *

“It’s the _principle_ of the thing. I have no problem with you doing favors for people but she didn’t even offer to pay you–”

“She did–”

“SHE OFFERED TO PAY _ME.”_

 _“It’s the same_ –”

“It’s not. You know its not. You’re a goddamn person, you’re not my slave.”

“I know that. You know that, and it’s enough,” he reached across the table for her hand but she didn’t take the offer, instead downing the rest of her wine glass.

“Its not. And she’s the fourth one since we’ve been…”

“Since we’ve been active.”

Ripley huffed. “That’s a way to put it.” For a month they barely left the flat, acknowledging the outside world as little as possible becuase it hadn’t changed a wink, while their lives were turned over and hauled inside-out over what they had witnessed, what each of them had to do, what they were put through. It was only recently that they had been going out and about, trying to live again. “Last week you helped Noemi fix their refrigerator. And she _has_ a synth. Just not the right ‘type’. Fucking bullshit, you’re an exec model anyway–”

“I’m more than capable of friendly favors for those around us, if it keeps them cordial with us. And unsuspecting.”

“And _that’s_ more bullshit. No reason they can’t know.”

“You’d be shunned as perverse or pitied as a fool.”

“I don’t give a _fuck_. You deserve the dignity of being able to hold a woman’s hand in public without–”

“It’s not about that, its–”

“I told you I don’t _care_! It’s entirely about your worries and fears around being found out, and I _get it_ but its _bullshit_.” 

“Amanda–”

“Don’t,” she stood up hastily, pushed her chair in, and carried her dinner plate to the sink. 

“I don’t enjoy arguing. I understand that discussions must occur between partners of any kind, however–” his voice dropped from a formal octave to pleading: “If I may be…candid….It frightens me.”

Amanda dropped her silverware in the sink with a harsh clang. “No one healthy enjoys arguing,” she was still warm in the cheeks, annoyed, verging on pissed off. “Let’s go to bed.”

“I’d rather not.”

“ _What_?”

“You were the one that stressed to me endlessly that if I don’t want romantic or sexual contact, that I was to turn it down.”

“Yeah, please tell me no if you don’t want it but _why not?”_

 _“_ Becuase i don’t think using sex to spend excess energy made in anger is conducive to positive communication.”

“Alright. Fuck. Fine. You still shouldn’t make us hide ourselves. And you shouldn’t feel obligated to serve strangers just to make them like you. It won’t make them change or change their minds about you. Trust me, I know.” _too well_. Friends, found-family, even coworkers’ admiration, trust, or even civility couldn’t be earned through hard work. Even this relationship, this absurd thing between them that threatened daily to crack, to leak out whatever scant brief joys held them together–even this didn’t happen through work but dumb luck, and exact timing. 

Really though, a lover was the least the universe owed her. _Then again they couldn’t even give me a real one just_ –Samuels was watching her sheepishly, trying to act as if he was giving full attention instead to cleaning off the table. 

“Still. Bed; not– Only that. I just want to go to bed with you.” she didn’t, not now, not with the chance of more of this conversation, but this was the man that had been waking her up from nightmares, getting her meds and glasses of water throughout the night, showering with her becuase she didn’t like the sound of the water, pressing his hand against hers with childlike wonder that he could touch her at all. “I don’t want to talk but–you’re right. And I don’t like arguing either.”

* * *

It wasn’t much of a compromise, but Ripley installing the climate unit on the desk girl’s studio-flat ceiling while Samuels merely held tools for her was better than telling the girl where she could stick it. 

“I really appreciate this–but–why can’t he do–”

“I’m an executive model, and Ripley’s personal assistant granted by the company. Ripley is the one that’s…”

“I’m good with tech,” she said, her head and shoulders in the ceiling looking at the wiring hook up for the new unit.

“She’s an absolute wizard with complicated machinery,” there was enough affection and pride in his voice that the girl looked almost confused. “Ripley’s an engineer.”

“Oh. That’s interesting.” she said; Ripley pulled out of the ceiling and slid the tile back in place. Samuels gave her an arm down from the step ladder.

“Yeah. I’ve got a magic touch with some even more delicate junk than this,”

“Good to know,” the girl smiled. “Sure I can’t pay you anything? I feel bad putting you out like this.”

“Its not a big deal,” she folded her ladder back up and turned to her companion. “Pick your jaw up Samuels,”

“ _Why did you say that_?”

“That I”m good with delicate mechanical junk?” Amanda shrugged. “Humility isn’t one of my virtues, and you know that I’m right. I’ve very good with it.”

“yousaiditagainpleasestop.”

“Come on,” she grinned, unable to stop the reaction to his increasingly bothered expression.


	25. cozy prompt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> outreotter:   
> It's chilly out and in spite of the fact the heating in the apartment works just fine, there is a Place to Be. And that Place is Chris. Warm warm Chris.

She wasn’t surprised that he radiates heat; after all, even her datapad and its tiny battery leave her hands warmer while using it, but this coziness was…very nice. Physicality had often been lacking in her past relationships, or else it was all there was to it. Her new housemate however had both an emotional and literal warmth to him that drew her in; into communication and contact and out of her own personal bubble of isolated silence.

Now with snow falling outside, some flakes yet unmelted in her hair after her well-intended but poorly-thought jog, the synth in flannel pants and a longsleeved thermal was a welcome sight.

“Oh good you didn’t freeze out there,” he turned his book over, and laid it open on the table.

“I did a little. Want to thaw me out?” Ripley shed her coat, kicked her soaking-wet running shoes off, shedding her joggers too, and plopped on the sofa next to him.

“In what fashion?”

“Don’t get excited,” she said, muffled by the fabric on his shoulder, “I just want this.”

“To snuggle?”

“Don’t call it that; it sounds lame.”

“Cuddle?”

“Just as bad,” 

“No it’s not; they’re both delightful terms,” he grinned, pulling her onto his lap.

Not that he was /trying/ to get her riled up, but he did expect her to staddle him, offer another snide remark before kissing him, tugging his shirt over his head. Instead she merely settled in her new spot, stretched her legs out to the side, and curled up, resting her head on his chest: easily his warmest spot due to whatever processing unit was below the steel-alloy sternum.

“You’re so cozy,”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, but he answers with the same reply he did that morning when she called him cute:

“Thank you?” she laughs, quietly and sweetly enough to be almost considered a giggle, but he knows better than to point that out, and smiles. “Please, use me as long as you like, I don’t mind and rather enjoy the company, but wouldn’t you like to dry off a little.”

“Later…maybe. Reach over and hand me the throw blanket, I’m cold,”  
“Because you half undressed yourself,” he said.

“If I didn’t you’d have made me, or else risk pneumonia or something else overdramatic and dire.”

“You sure it isn’t becuase you wanted to?”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve for someone who doesn’t have nerves.”

“What do you mean?”

“You. You don’t have a nervous system,” she said.

“I have to argue that point, my love: am a nervous system,” once again, Amanda laughed, softly, quietly, sweetly, but this time– “Is that all it takes to make you giggle?” he affectionately tucked a damp lock of hair behind her ear.

“Hey,” she poked him hard in the chest, barely a nudge to whatever sensors he had there, “Listen. I don’t snuggle. I’m not cute. And I don’t giggle.”

“I didn’t say you were cute, but you have reminded me: you are absolutely precious. Adorable. Very, very cute.” 

“I’m going to hurt you.”

“Is that a promise?” it wasn’t a threat, or a method to hold her back but he brings his arms up around her and held her a little more snugly, pressed a kiss on her forehead.


	26. Faulty Update Prompt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OUTREOTTER ASKED  
> A flawed update causes either Samuels' hearing or sight to go out, and Amanda stubbornly sticks around to watch after him in spite of his protests that he'll be just fine while waiting for the patch.

“I know, you’re fine. You’re always fine, which is why you’re trying to plug my datapad charger in your arm,”

“Oh…”

Amanda took it from him gently, handed him the correct wire, and watched him find his out-port, plug it it, and pull his sleeve down over it.

“Right. ‘ _Oh’_. What if you used a power cell charger instead of a wall port one? You would have _fried_.”

Samuels looked up at her, trying his best smile, a smile that has made Amanda late to work multiple times. “Luv, I’ll be–” 

“Over here. I’m over here. Behind you.”

“Right,” he turned around, sheepish now. “I’ll be fine for a few hours, I’m sure the patch will be out by the end of the day.”

“Its not a few hours, Wednesday is my long day, AND you don’t know if the patch will be out.”

“I’m perfectly capable of–”

“Last time I left you to solve a tech issue on your own, you died.”

“Entirely different situation.” 

“I’m calling out.”

“How are you going to explain to Jac that you’re staying home with me without it sounding…”

Amanda smiled slightly, a little bashful, before crossing closer to him, so she could set her hands on his shoulders, one of his came up to cover hers as she gently dug her fingers into synthetic skin.

“I’m almost certain that she knows what’s going on, or at least is guessing. The number of times you’ve walked me to work–in arguably one of the top safest off-planet cities in the _galaxy_ ,”

“I could merely be….an overly-gallant servant.” His lover’s boss would be far from the first person to know the truth; keeping track of people who had worked with or seen his model with the knowledge of what he was, and those who wouldn’t know was more difficult with each new place they went, and playing distant was increasingly painful the longer he spent with her.

“I’m calling her, telling her you’re fucked up, and we’ll find…something to do.”

“Theres a few things I don’t need vision for,” he purred.

“You spend too much time around me your corrupted calculator,” she kissed the top of his head, “I meant you could talk to me about the last draft before you send it in, I know you wanted to read it to me,”

“I can’t _see_ to read it,”

“Then recite it Mr. Perfect Memory.” She offered him a hand in getting out of his desk chair, though it was useless for balance with their weight differences she kept him from tripping over the leg of the desk.

“Oh this is not good,”

“What?”

“My stabilizers are telling me that I’m upside down….And logically, I’m only assuming here, I’m not standing on the ceiling.”

“I’m going to walk you to the couch and I’m calling the synthetics division and do not even try to tell me not to because if this was me we were talking about you would have _carried_ me to the hospital by now,”

“Very different,” he said.

“No. Let me worry about you like you do for me.” 

Christopher couldn’t answer to that, the idea that Amanda _worried_ about him to the point of strain in her voice…well he wasn’t simply _worth_ that kind of energy.

“Alright, luv. But I promise, I’m _fine_.”

“I’m still calling to report the error.” she was already looking up their number on the phone, and though he couldn’t see the action the distraction in her voice let him know what she was doing. With her free hand she reached back to him, and took his hand; since touch and sound the only external senses he was aware of, there was a hyper-sensitivity to the texture of her skin, the patterns of her finger prints and the lines of it, and he traced them like palm-reader.


	27. Falling in love for the fifth time

The first time she thought she fell in love with the guy barely lasted a second, and only served to show her how desperate she must have subconsciously been for human kindness. Or any kindness–the man holding open the door for her with a polite smile was very clearly an android; she’d seen multiple of them at the offices in her many visits there.

* * *

The second time was after she had taken to following him on his daily tasks, and then having him follow her: he was by nature easy company and a good cure for boredom.

“What other movies do you like?”

“Most of what I’ve seen are older films, the Weyland-Yutani media branch purchased the rights to the Criterion, and I’ve seen all of them.”

“So…like…. _Casablanca?_ That kind of thing?”

“Forgive me, as I know its a perennial favorite, but…I found it overrated.”

Amanda perked up. “Really now?”

“And…you?” he asked, hesitant, afraid to insult.

“Fucking hated it.”

he turned away immediately to hide it, but Ripley saw it, and recognized it: a look of bashful joy, like they were school children that shared a first and awkward kiss, and didn’t know what else to say.

* * *

The third time was when she saw him on the security screen on Sevastapol, alive, alright, but it was quickly brushed back in favor of more important things, everyone’s safety, Taylor’s health, their own survival, _the flight recorder of her mother’s ship_. He knew this too, and despite the capability of going right into soldier-mode, he stayed his very human self. Clam, true, but he maintained his quirks and mannerism, if only subtly. It helped her stay collected, and knowing that he was still being himself, kept her grounded when she watched him die.

* * *

The fourth time was when, shaking and shaken, she struggled to sleep across from Taylor’s empty bunk and, gun in hand, she crept from the crew quarters to the nicer cabins, to where Samuels was housed by the company, far from the human members. She knocked on the door, and he answered looking as haggard as robot possibly could, and he well deserved it, being, quite literally, death warmed over.

“Can I stay here?” he opened the door for her, and she noted that he hadn’t been resting, his bed still made. She crashed into it, patted the place next to her, “Please, you should–”

“I’m afraid to even paritally limit my power usage.”

“Why?”

“Because what if I can’t turn it back on?”

Amanda started to choke on her tears, for his fear, for her physical pain, for what she’d seen and done, for everything that happened. 

“Then you can stay awake.” The bunk was narrow, and with him next to her there wasn’t an inch wasted. Close enough to touch, to kiss, and Amanda tilted upwards to kiss his forehead. “Thank you….for everything.”

It took him a moment of confusion and worry before kissing her softly, tight lipped, and chastely on the lips with so much ardor in his hesitant motions that instead of dismissing the thought again, and Amanda let herself feel like she was falling in love with him, and put an arm around him, snaking a hand into his partially-singed hair. 

* * *

Ripley didn’t think she could fall in love a second time, for good, for forever with the same person, thinking fourth time was the charm. Of course she said it sweetly to him, the same way he would call her his sky of stars she’s say that she fell in love with him more each day, but it was always the same love, the same falling.

A neighbor’s cat rejected her litter, and seeing the desperate plea for foster volunteers in the building’s news email, her lover took home two of them. They’d been talking about getting a pet of some kind, but she was surprised to come home, and see Christopher standing at the counter, holding a newborn kitten, smaller than his hand delicately, and feeding it from the tiniest bottle Ripley had ever seen.

“There you are,” his voice was up an octave, like talking to a human child, “that’s better isn’t it?” Amanda walked up to him and hugged him from behind, watching him. “His brother is still in there if you’d like to help,” he said in his natural voice, and nodded at the enclosure, small and filled with a soft blanket around a hot water bottle. “I only just now brought them home, but they’re due to be fed. Please don’t be upset with me, but they still had four of them on their hands and I don’t need nightly sleep so I thought that…” 

“Oh no, please don’t think…When we talked about getting a younger animal for pet I didn’t think you meant a week,” her heart swelled, “But we’ll keep them, and I’m not upset, not at all. Surprised…is all.” She kissed his cheek and reached into the cage for the other one, curled up on the side of the blanket over the heat source. “They’ll like to cuddle with you when they’re bigger,”

“Healthy cats would actually have a similar temperature to my standard output, so yes, they probably will.”

“I’ll lose my spot.”

“The three of you can share,” and then he added in his higher voice again, asking the kitten this time “Won’t you, little one?” then, in a careful tone he continued but looked up to Ripley, “You wouldn’t want to leave your mum out of it would you?”

Amanda leaned forward and kissed him. “I think I love you,”

“I would hope so, you did illegally marry me after all.”

“I mean…I always did, but…sometimes you surprise me and it’s like…all over again it just hits me that…”

“The very same, my dear, the very same.”


	28. Various asks and anons

**Does Ripley Jr. have a favorite video game or board game?**

Solitaire in phsyical or digital form was a lifeline for when she ran out of projects and didn’t want to waste money on a book. She taught herself how to play while her grandmother was in the hospital, right before she landed in foster care.

There was a bar on the docks at a colony she worked on briefly; they had an antique Galaga arcade game that the owner charged way more credits to play than it was worth, but Amanda was obsessed with it.

Once in a blue moon she was invited to game nights with classmates or housemates or people from her dorm in college (the shitty one that they offered to the full-ride kids like her who didn’t have anywhere else to go and therefore wouldn’t complain.) She played everything from beer pong to Cards Against Humanity, to hologames, VR fights, Stratego, but she loved trivia games. Even though she was on scholarship people tended to underestimate what she could do, what she knew. She won nearly every knowledge-based game.

FIrst-person shooter video games and hologames stopped appealing to her after Sevastapol; but she’s willing to play Mario Kart 45 (or something else colorful and silly of that nature), or mystery/fantasy based games.

**Would Ripley even have like any tattoos or any body piercings?**

I did write a scene once in which she was getting dressed for a nicer night out ~~(she doesn’t like it even thought it was her idea, but she’s doing this becuase he’s never had anything nicer as a date than the cheap cafe between home and her work so fine she’ll put on a happy face for two hours and wear the damn dress~~ ), and she put earrings in, so she has at least one piercing on each ear. When she was younger she might have had more; but unless you do them yourself (which, tbh, I could see her doing) they cost money, and Ripley is pragmatic. 

Tattoos I’ve never thought of, but maybe something like a dragon around her ankle, something badass but still small to mid-size. Personally I couldn’t see her as the kind of person to get a full-sleeve or anything major like that, or anything too dainty like little flowers or stars. Same thing with the pragmatism aspect. Maybe she has some kind of cyberpunk looking thing, like a little circuit board or gears. Part of her might consider getting tattoos to cover her scars from the station, it’d be cheaper than getting surgery, and hide them better; typically she didn’t mind her scars ( _I got this one from falling off my dirtbike into a gorge. This one is from falling out of a tree. And this one is from the time the dumbass I was working with nearly crushed me by lowering the ship engine we were building while I was under it)_ but these scars are different. She doesn’t want to relive or retell the stories behind any of them.

[This segment was added later to the post] 

By the time Amanda’s around, Tannhäuser Gate is a defunct lost dream of a jump station that was never completed for public use. A name chosen from classic media to help draw attention to it because humans keep gripping at things that once made them smile. Still, it had been operation for all of two years, and when running gave off a halo of blue-white light, like a collapsed star, visible no closer to Earth than Saturn.

It could perform one-way jumps to Proxima Centauri’s system–not even out of the same sector of the Milky Way galaxy as Terra, it was financially useless, requiring a second gate for return missions. Ripley’s first tattoo was one she spent days on, weeks on, months on, before forgetting about it and finally getting it at 17 with a fake ID: a pale blue halo with the words “like tears in rain” spaced inside it, on the back of her left shoulder.

She has a dragon around her ankle that she utterly refuses to admit is a Tolkien reference. When time and energy and money allow her to read, she likes stories where hopes are fulfilled. It’s a soft part of her, and maybe she thought the pain of the inking would even out the softness of it, the badass-ness of a fire breathing dragon on her some kind of shield against the homey idea of “there and back again.” At the time she’s almost nineteen, living with a guy she met in the foster system, not sure if she liked the idea of moving in with him or if she liked the idea of moving out of her last foster house more. He saw it when she got it and had a similar one done on his upper arm; Ripley never told him it was from _The Hobbit_. 

At 21 and alone for years, nothing but loneliness ahead as far as she can see, she takes her first out-of-sector contract mission. The pay is shit but they make an 8 hour stop at a gate station that freight ships often refueled at. Perhaps, just maybe, a light of hope so small it’s like a pin-hole in a wall of a dark room; the seventh star in the Pleiades when she’s not wearing her glasses. No one knew shit of course, but there was a tattoo shop, hole in the wall, with the name Voyage Arts, a beautiful woman with vibrant red hair working the chair, and it gave her the idea: inside of her right forearm, the pulsar map from the Voyager golden record. (I stopped giving a fuck about canon 384 years ago, i KNOW you can see her arms in the game I _KNOW_.)

She’s 27, lying face down in bed while heavy rain beats the window so hard she can almost feel it on her own skin; instead a gentle, lazy set of fingers is tracing her Tannhäuser Gate tattoo.

“ _You’re only going to call me a romantic, but this only adds to my theory that it might have been fate calling_.”

“ _You’re right, I’m calling you a romantic,”_ his hand continues across the bare skin of her back, his arm resting across her.

At 28 she’s not quite drunk, but certainly not sober when she chooses her next one, a heart barely the size of quarter designed of interlocking gears, inside of her left wrist. Night out with the work-friends, what could go wrong besides everything, socially inept after all this time, useless around people her age, useless around people who are her _kind_ , flesh and blood isn’t as impressed by her as he silicone and steel thing that’s probably waiting up for her, worried as hell. Images of a debate she tries to hide deep in her skull creep forward, arguments that she’s made a horrible mistake, an ache in her that she’s technically still alone, none of it silenced by the gold band she’s wearing, by the one that he wears. The tattoo artist asks her if she’s been drinking, she says no; she’s only tired, and maybe she’s right, maybe none of this is alcohol but it’s just the exhaustion and fear.

Guilt drives her into her lover’s arms once she’s home, holding closely to him to feel the realness of what he is, what they are, what the have despite that echo of _thing_ still hurting like a bruise just too deep to see. He doesn’t know why she’s affectionate: when her emotions ran high it usually involved sex someplace other than their bed, followed by her clinging, cuddling, kissing him in bed, falling sleep eventually. This kind of touch was more his doing, his process of emotion running the opposite direction as hers, a slow increase of touch and intimacy that took half the night. He assumes her mood now is a result of whatever happened with the people from her work, but she had been blue at first, then genuinely depressed for a nearly a week and sometimes she too just needs the contact and reassurance. 

“ _What’s under the gauze?”_

_“New tattoo,” she mumbles from where she’s half buried in his shirtfront.  
_

_“Can I see it?”  
_

_“You’ll call me a romantic.”  
_

_“Now I really want to see it.”  
_

she shows it to him, stone sober now, and torn between regret and self-consciousness as he looks at it closely; he only takes a moment and then kisses her, lightly, briefly,

“ _You absolute romantic.”_

**_Talk to me about Amanda and Taylor. Are they friends? Do they hang out? Is it all stilted politeness? How do you see their relationship?_ **

**Given events of canon and my current fic:** Taylor was civil with Amanda, but between the latter’s issues with the whole ‘first impressions’ thing, and Taylor being much more upright and career-driven than Amanda they never quite hit it off. Conner was used to being one of the only men on a mission, but seeing the two young women (twenty? he guessed? they both looked much younger than what they turned out to be) he inwardly groaned at the idea of getting stuck on the trip with a girl-clique. Finding out that Taylor preferred the company of her hand-held video games and computer-conferring with her bosses over her mini-com; and that Amanda was micro-focused on the synthetic when she wasn’t working on daily tasks–he was….surprised. Verlaine wasn’t. She has two nieces like Taylor and Amanda, and they damn near hate each other.

There isn’t, by the time they arrive at the station, all that much animosity. Amanda is still wary of Taylor, but unlike how she was with Samuels, she doesn’t immediately hate her for being part of Weyland-Yutani. She just sees another young woman desperate to reach her goal. One night Amanda was playing solitaire on her bunk, and Taylor called across the cabin to her, offered her to use any of her hologames if she was bored. Amanda thanked her, but never really took her up on it, despite Samuels’ insistence that she try to seek out human company instead.

**If Taylor had survived the events** : eventually they might have gotten closer. At first Amanda doesn’t really want to get into anything that will remind her of the station, nothing that could ever…bring her mind back to images of that place. Still, Samuels is adamant that she spend more time with humans; that she’s around him all the time and it doesn’t bother her or remind her of anything. She should try to talk to Taylor, she’s the only other human that actually lived through anything at all close to what she did. It could help her. 

When the two finally meet again, they talk about anything BUT Sevastopol, anything. Taylor’s now a marketing executive for a hologame company; Amanda’s working as a glorified mechanic part time on the base. Taylor mentions she’s living in Japan, near where her mother’s family was originally from; Amanda tells her how her dad’s side had Thai and Japanese and that he always told her and her mother that they’d tour the countries one day. Taylor invites Amanda to come and visit at some point. She probably won’t take her up on the offer, but they do end up staying in contact; they’re too different to ever function as exceptionally close, but they do remain friends.

**Does Ripley have any hobbies other than tech/machines?**

Her dad, for the few years he was around, got her started on vintage science fiction movies, and eventually that turned into a wider interest in films in general, but its more of a “like” than a hobby.

You don’t get a body like hers without a) great genes and b) a lot of upkeep, so she enjoys walking, jogging, hiking. Also used to like rock climbing before moving to Luna on the search for her mother. She wouldn’t be opposed to trying that again, maybe taking a trip to the mountains at some point.

She’ll read a little, more now than before, and used to prefer short story collections to full novels; and like her taste in movies, her interests in various genres has expanded the older (and less picky) she was. 

There was a good three thousand credits in her account when Samuels was came across her records and started looking for more information on her. How this happened he had no idea. Answer: Ripley’s damn good at cards. Solitaire. Poker. Rummy. She only plays for money when she knows she has a chance. She’s good at reading people from across a card table. Judging their actual character and how they think of her? She’s very bad at that, typically assuming the worst. 

Another thing is that, while its still tech/machine related, she has her little projects. Ripley will “improve” or work on various appliances rather than buy upgraded replacements, and any time one of her changes didn’t work, or otherwise destroyed said object, she would rework the remains into something entirely different. Her alarm clock has components from a radio, toaster oven, and the button on top is the door bell from her last apartment. The coffee machine is the only thing she refuses to fuck around with, becuase if she doesn’t have coffee she’s probably not going to survive the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> amanda, to the cashier: we'd like to adopt this tiny robot  
> cashier, ringing up a toy robot: .....?  
> samuels: "purchase" she would like to purchase it.  
> amanda: I know what I said.


	29. imperfect prompt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I love the fics that have Ripley and Samuels as these perfect soul-mates but wouldn't they have to have problems at some time?"

They can and they do, and I want to get into it eventually once I have them “settled” (no longer going into fight or flight at the sound of the elevator stalling, at someone shouting outside; finally being able to sleep with out the vents sealed off). 

Most of their issues will come from the fact that no matter how aware that Christopher is that he’s welcome to have his own thoughts and opinions, Amanda will still have to _ask_ him to tell or show her what he thinks/wants. 

I’d imagine it will go something like this.

*hastily written ficlet under the cut*

It only started with a ‘ _Do you want to watch a movie with me?’_ Nights in were less expensive on wallets and emotions, and the privacy gave them much-needed time to be close. Outside they’re still afraid of being noticed, still worried about everyone’s reactions–about the company finding out. Even though they legally have nothing they can do or say, there’s still the nagging fear that something could come between them if they’re found out.

But nights in and guards down left it open for a plethora of problems beyond simply being seen.

“For once just _tell me_ , it’s not that hard–” 

“I genuinely would prefer whichever one you’d like.”

“And I don’t have an opinion!” Amanda’s at the end of her rope; tired of his self-sacrificial habits, tired of his shying away and backing down, of letting her cut him off in conversation, of not even voicing a preference for which side of a recently-colder bed he’d like. She’s wondered more than once if this was a ridiculous mistake, not just for what he is, but even if he was… _Real? A human? Don’t I tell him that he is exactly that? Do I believe it?_ …she still would have the same–or at least similar–reservations. They never exactly _dated_. They had their short friendship on the Torrens, and ended up anchored safely to reality again in the other’s arms after what they’d been through. 

Not including cryo, she has known him for a total of 34 waking days before she invited him to say with her, and it terrifies her.

“I know that you don’t like the older dramas, so if you want to see something else and it would make you happier then–”

“ _But you like the older dramas_. Why can’t you ever just take what you want? Do something on your own?”

“It is, quite literally, hard wired into me to prefer whatever pleases you more.”

“Then fucking rewrite it becuase I don’t want you falling over trying to–Jesus, what is this?” It’s been infuriating, not once in this exchange has he raised his voice at all, and it only made her louder until she was nearly screaming.

“You have assured me so many times that you understand and accept that I’m not a person and I am…endlessly grateful for it but you don’t seem to understand it as well as you claim to. My purpose and design is to make your life easier–”

“And you’re not doing that right now.”

“If you know which of the films I’d rather be watching and it upsets you this much to see your choice of them, then choose the other instead.”

“But it isn’t just the damn movies, it’s everything. For God’s sake we argued over making tea or coffee yesterday. We could have had both. And you…Write over whatever coding is telling you that you’re so inferior and–”

“ _I am your inferior_. In so many ways, and I wish you saw your own value.” 

This circle would keep going; one part of her knows that he’s right, knows that she doesn’t give herself enough credit as a person, as someone that exists. The other part of her curls up in a back corner of her brain, sobbing uncontrollably over every awful and unforgivable thing she’s ever done, and that her housemate was ever more deserving than she was of anything. Maybe it’s over, she wonders, as nice as it’s been, as great as he was for the past few months as their true selves start to show they’ll probably fall apart. It always happens this way. It’s why she told herself no more live-in lovers. 

“Turn on your movie, I’m going across the street for beers. Do you want anything?”

“You shouldn’t be drinking with your medications.”

“I don’t give a fuck; I’m having a bottle of beer.”

“Amanda–”

“Have you actually ever consented to anything we’ve done with your own words? Or have you just been saying what your calculator brain tells you I want to hear” _So long as we’re having an uncomfortable argument I might as well get that out._

 _“‘_ Consent’?” he pauses, not that he really needs that much time to think, but mimicking her breaks in speech feels better, it gives weight and meaning to the words that follow more than they would have if he just continued. “You’re referring to…intimacy.”

“I’m not, but–yes, I am, I mean everything. Have you ever said anything that you’ve meant? Would you mean it if you didn’t know it was what I wanted? Could you?”

“I-I don’t know.” He feels small around her most of the time, but even more when she’s upset; it’s usually his fault or else something he cannot help her with, and being useless for anything goes directly against his instincts, his basic coding, and causes logic misreads in his head that blur his surroundings. “I know that I cared about you before I met you. I had the…sentience needed to love you before I knew that you would even want to approach me for companionship let alone… But since then? I don’t know. I feel as if I’ve enjoyed everything we have.” 

“I don’t know if that’s enough.”

“Can this wait until tomorrow?” she’s still standing close enough to him that he can slightly reach out to her, tuck a few strands of hair that have escaped her ponytail behind her ear. “We’ve already missed a good bit of both films and…” _if we’re over I want one more evening to hold onto you_. 

“…I’m going to get the beer, and I’ll be back. Do you want anything?”

it’s strange, they both think it: he can request things when she asks this, he can get himself something if he’d want it, but when it involves another person, _a human_ , he has no idea of what if any of his actions are ones he’d want if she didn’t. Still it’s all so _abstract_ ; he loves her, he feels like he means what he says, and for now it’s enough for him even if it isn’t for her.

“I’m alright, thank you. Is there anything I can do?”

“No…I just….We need work or a programmer or _something_.” Playing house with him has felt more normal than anything she’s ever done and simultaneously so dreamlike she reaches out to be sure he’s there every morning when she wakes up. 

“We’ll think of something,” he offers her a slight smile, and she accepts it with a brief, tight hug before heading towards the door.

“I really hope we do.”


	30. self indulgent nonsense

It’s something ridiculously sugary and domestic but…amanda does not own fancy pyjamas. She’s practical, old torn t-shirts and underwear, or worn-out joggers and an old shirt. She doesn’t own anything frilly or fancy. During the “oh my god you don’t own any clothing” trip to whatever variant of a shopping mall she and Chris end up at, she half-glances in the window of a lingerie shop, not that she _wants_ anything from there, but some of their stuff looks nice, and if she had endless hoards of money maybe she’d give it a try? Still, useless junk. 

Chris notices (he notices everything, remembers everything) and plays back the recording of her line of vision as he walks past the store again while she’s occupied in retrofuture radio shack, sees the satin pyjama set she was looking at, and goes in to buy it (on a company credit card no less imagine being the accountant that sees THAT store tab on it).

Of course, there’s a matching bodice and set of underwear that go with it and he has NO IDEA if that’s something that Amanda would like. She doesn’t have anything like it, is that becuase, as he already has learned, she’s too practical and self-denying? Or because she doesn’t like it? Either way, he chokes out a “Yes, sure.” to the girl working and though he doesn’t know her size he does know her dimensions (all of them: _all of them_ ) in _inches._ The girl’s confused, kinda wigged out, but whatever, he’s polite and friendly and she’s dealt with nervy boyfriends and girlfriends in the shop before so whatever.

Amanda is angry for a second when she notices the box sitting on the bed when she gets out of the shower that night; it’s too much money, they’re too fragile, _she’s not enough to bother dressing up like that._ Why bother putting a pretty wrapping on….someone plain. Chris is confused; Ripley is a confidant woman and yes, there are women out there with prettier faces or societally-deemed “better” bodies (his words aren’t helping her much) but she’s lovely, and she’s unique in appearance, and this skin is the one that she’s wearing so of course he finds it beautiful becuase he finds her beautiful (neither of them have any confidence at all when you dig deep enough). 

“Still, it’s too expensive.”

“It really wasn’t….And Weyland-Yutani paid for it anyway.”

“You didn’t.”

“They don’t know that you didn’t bring a case of belongings with you onto the station, and they don’t know that you didn’t lose them all, or that I’m not replacing them all for you as a courtesy.”

so okay, fine, she’ll keep them.

“Try them on, I want to be sure they fit you,” he says, and she lifts the long-sleeved button up shirt and pants out of the box, revealing the bra and panties under it. She looks at the other half of her gift, sitting there in a puddle of pink tissue paper. She looks up at the increasingly-sick looking man in front of her, and then back down to the box, and up to him again.

“You…bought me lingerie?” 

“…….if you don’t like it I can bring it back but the girl at the store said the whole thing was a matching set and you don’t have anything like it and I–”

“Want to see them on me?”

“Yes—I mean—No, well I would, but not for that reason–I meant. I wanted to get you something nice that you wouldn’t get yourself.” 

She gathers up all the items, and kisses his cheek as she crosses the room back to the bathroom and shuts the door to change. 


	31. prompt: ownership

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Amanda getting full legal ownership of samuels that she then gives to him?"

There’s differences between them, both obvious and less than obvious. There’s a selection of mechanical texts and beaten-up paperback novels on a shelf in the main living space; on the shelf below it sits a more choosy set of novels, and several current events topic books on the AI industry. There’s a gaming console tucked under the TV set, and a fountain pen beside a notebook on the coffee table.

More obvious differences could be seen in the array on the table. It’s set for two, but wineglass full of a milky white liquid, it’s corresponding plate features a thick yellow document folder and nothing else.

“Amy what are you–?” _doing home early_ , he meant to ask her, but the dimmed lights around their flat with a set table looks even more out of the ordinary than her beating him home. 

“I have a surprise for you,”

“What…are you talking about?”

“Sit,” she’s smiling at him, and it concerns him. Still, he follows her request, leaving his jacket on the hook by the door. 

“What exactly is the occasion for this?” Amanda looks mock-offended.

“You do wonderful little things for me all the time,” he could get a better look at her now too, her hair was down, and she has on a nice sweater and clean, dark jeans she usually reserved for going out. “I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Thank you, luv…Dinner though?”

“And something else,” she smiles at him over her wineglass; despite the formality, she’s put the tea spoons on the wrong side of the plates, and she’s sitting crooked in the chair, with one leg folded under her, and the other foot resting on the upper rung of the chair.

“Is that innuendo?”

“No, but it could be if you want,” she sips at her drink, she looks close to tipsy, either that or increasingly excited. “Open that,” she says, and nods to the folder in front of him. Without taking her eyes off of him, she picks at her plate of pasta that looks suspiciously like take out that she put on a plate and stuck dishes in the sink to make it look like she was cooking healthier food at home. At the moment he can’t bring himself to care though.

“Are these sonographs?” he asks with a straight face.

“One miracle at a time, okay?”

He’s smiling at her reply, as straightly delivered as his own jest was. Maybe her sense of humor was wearing off on him; maybe they had the same kind of it from the start. They did have some things in common, enough in temperament and taste that they got along increasingly well in the short time they knew each other before falling into playing house back at her home colony. 

Still, for as well as he knows her in their short year together, he has no idea what she could have gotten him that required such…an affair instead of just _telling_ him about it. They’d already, with a favor from a friend of a friend, had procured papers for him, making him as legally human as she was, making their semi-legal marriage certificate legal on the books. What could she possibly still have–

“Amanda.”

“Yes?”

“This is a certificate of operation for a synthetic, with registration papers.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Are you replacing me?” She doesn’t laugh, or answer at all, but gets up from her seat and goes across the room to get his pen, an antique fountain one she bought him for their ‘anniversary’ several weeks ago. She hands it to him with a smile. “Why do I need–”

“You’re an official and legal human as Christopher McClaren, meanwhile I still own a synthetic, a secondhand one designated as Samuels. If you sign this it means that the synthetic is owned by Mr. McClaren, not me.”

“This is a formality then.”

“Well,” she sighs, she thought that it would have been a bigger deal to him than he’s showing. “Yeah, it is a formality, but it’s…”

“If this card house ever falls down then I’d technically be unclaimed property; Weyland-Yutani could decided to take me back.”

“Which is why the third section of that lists me as the secondary: if you’re ever incapacitated, killed, or someone finds out that Samuels and McClaren are the same person, then property is reverted back to me until I can fix more papers becuase I refuse to _own_ you.”

“But they wouldn’t be able to change that? If we’e caught, this wouldn’t–”

“I’m not an idiot; I thought that part through carefully,” she watches him sign the documents, straighten them, and close the folder. “This also means that you never need to follow any orders from me again that you don’t want to follow.”

“You’ve never made me do anything I didn’t want to,”

“But it’s…I don’t like knowing that I might be accidentally telling you to do things. I could say ‘hey take the trash out for me please?’ and you can’t say no. What about consent? How would I ever know that you didn’t actually want something that you told me you did, that you said yes to?”

“I’ve never once done anything with you or for you that I didn’t wholly want to and enjoy doing.”

“I trust you, but this makes me feel a lot more morally sound.”

“Understood.”

“There’s another one too,” she slides another paper over to him, “Since you’re legally a person all the way around, and since everything here is technically over the table and on the books legitimate…”

“You filed for a change of name?” he asks, looking over the half-sheet she has, the carbon copy of the one that she must have left at the court.” 

“It’s an addition, not a change.”

“Amanda Tei Ripley-McClaren.”

“You should probably pick a middle name,”

“Samuel works,”

“That’s the most uncreative thing that you’ve ever said,” she smiles at him, she can’t control that reaction; something she found herself doing less and less the older she got she wasn’t even noticing now becuase it happened so often.

“I never claimed I was anything else,”

“What do you want to do now?”

“Is cozying up with you on the sofa too tame and domestic for you? Or were you hoping for–”

“Teasing aside, and whatever I want aside, if that’s what you want to do, then I am absolutely sure that that’s exactly what I was hoping for.” Once he told her that she was perfect herself, and she had corrected him that she wasn’t. She was only a decent person; he was the perfect one. Now they mostly agree–at least out loud–that neither of them are flawless, but inwardly they still think that the other is. 

“I love you,” he says instead of telling her she’s perfection incarnate, but she can hear it in his voice nonetheless. 


	32. various prompts on Samuels

**26\. How does your character behave around children?**

Telling the next of kin was his least favorite–forget it, it was his most _hated_ part of his existence. It was numbing, almost, and with every wife that screamed until she was red in the face, and every husband that cried so hard he could feel his surface programming shift from executive to medical officer, for every mother that he watched lose her soul, every father who left with hollowed eyes, there was something even worse.

The kids.

It was rare, and there was usually a social worker, or someone from the foster offices with the child or children but once Samuels was called down to the lobby to greet a family member, and an eight year old boy was standing by the front desk. He still had his backpack on from school, and unlike the casually dressed civilians or uniformed employees, he was wearing a t-shirt covered in cartoon creatures that matched the lunchbox he was clutching with both hands. 

With adults, Samuels could pretend–most of the time. He could hold back whatever the jolts of static were that he worried were developing emotions and be the unflinching synthetic that he was built to be, the soulless drone that the humans delegated the less-than-pleasant tasks to. With the kids though? Nah. The younger ones would cry, usually, and there wasn’t much to do for them, as badly as he wished he could offer them comfort, or even a hug he was glued behind his desk, and the faux-silver WY medal that went to the next of kin looked especially pathetic in front of a newly-made orphan. Perhaps he couldn’t do much but he was kind to them, soft, as empathetic as he could be and rationalized the error of possessing his own thoughts and feelings as insignificant compared to being far less frightening to these already damaged children than he would have been when acting as a monotone droid.

When he no longer holds a position with WY, he still will go out of his way to be nice to kids, becuase he’s a nice person and only awful people are assholes to kids for no reason. He likes that kids don’t make any kind of logical sense whatsoever, finds them fascinating and endearing, and can’t see why Ripley isn’t upset by the fact that (at least with her current partner) she can’t have any. The subject is brought up once and then left alone after its…not so great resulting conversation. 

A note however: he is very very very not good at communicating with children beyond emotional communication. Kids are weird, and he barely grasps human socialization to begin with, and Ripley’s boss’s kid doesn’t know to play chess, and is more worried about what the king and queen’s names are than what he’s allowed to do with them on the playing board and Samuels is just a complete loss.

Another note: has never held a crying infant or fussy toddler (…or even a happy one actually) and has no idea how to, 10/10 could never babysit alone because he would Panic at everything and he’d also be a complete pushover..

**30\. What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?**

~~Ripley’s diet and sleep pattern and overall lack of self care.~~

Humans, honestly. 

Though continuously envious of things that they can do or be that will always escape him, envious that if there’s such thing as an afterlife he won’t have one while even the worst of men will, Samuels has a level of…pride too in what he is along with the self hatred. After all, he can genuinely multitask, unlike humans, has photographic memory (and video memory too, with perfect ability to play back things he’s seen), he knows more than what most medical professionals do even though he’s an office worker. He’s faster and more efficient than humans too. His margin of error is less than ¼ of a human’s.

It isn’t the human body itself that bothers him, nor any of it’s functions. It’s just…they’re so _slow_ to make up their minds when they already have so little time and yet they’re gifted with this sense of wonder and artistry and so many of them waste it. Or else, other greedy humans never allow them the time to use those skills and passions. Humans have made wars, made plagues, made genocides. Humans are what quietly decided that any android possessing more than neural network learning would be taken for deactivation. If not for having it drilled into him, programmed into him, would he even see himself as less than them? In his own way isn’t he more? 

Red eyes come back to memory, and finger shaped bruises around the neck of the woman he’d die for. 

Androids, synthetics, whatever they are–they are unnatural. _He_ is unnatural, and it discomforts him in what he assumes is the human part of him (is it a prejudice? is it common sense? instinct?). They disgust him too.

…..Also, spiders. Their movement too close to the movement those things that were crawling about the ship, that he kept seeing in the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t tell Ripley (she’s partial to catching them under a glass to free them, another example of her casual tenderness that he adores) but he kills them on sight, gladly.

**39\. Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?**

When he first brought home the two kittens (”A kitten” Ripley had told him, not “kittens” but there were only two left and he _couldn’t_ leave one…) they would bite at him, as kittens do. Needle-fine teeth made quick work on the artificial skin of his hands and he had so many small holes leaking white that he couldn’t quite tell where the injuries were. Redirecting fluid he was able to to slow the “bleeding” enough that Ripley was able to patch up the worst while auto-healing closed them off. 

Samuels was entirely unaffected; a half-heartedly stern ‘Please don’t do that,’ was all that he gave to the kittens, talking to them as if they were actual human children. 


	33. "A Gift" mini-one shot

“It’s enough for me that it’s a nice day out, and we can go for a walk when I get home from work.”

That was what she had said. But this was her _birthday_. Technically, given how many deep-space missions she’s carried out, she was closer to thirtieth than she was to her phsyical twenty-fifth. Time, space…of all the things that have ceased to make any kind of logical sense in their little pocket universe, age is the least of concern. She’s lived so many years longer than he has, and yet he’s the one that looks older than her; enough so that they sometimes get strange looks even in places where no one would ever guess he was a synthetic.

Perhaps he could have taken her to dinner again. True, once a week or so he’d insist on taking her out, sometimes to a dive bar that she’d been familiar with when she had been living on her own, sometimes someplace nicer and she’d grumble about having to dress up. There had to be something better than just taking a walk with her. She goes for a run every morning, and for as advanced as he is, anything more than a light jog is…clumsy at best, and he stays home. So it’d be nice, to see her trail with her, come home to a pot of tea, maybe a nice hot bath…

Still, he already spent two hours making a cake for her, and was rather proud of just how machine-made-perfect it looked. There were _some_ nice perks to being a soulless, mobile computer.

Yet it wasn’t enough. She deserves the world and a half, and she’s so _practical_ she never buys herself anything that isn’t a necessity. Or broken; she buys antique electronics and mechanical toys to repair or remake as a hobby, but it doesn’t cost much. And was he supposed to pick out for a person that had very little in common with him, and showed very little interest in anything gift-worthy?

She liked to read, he’d seen her with old paperbacks, and even a couple newer titles, but it was only at the end of the day or early in the morning.

_Ripley sits at the kitchen bar, back from her run, hair damp despite the cool morning, and she sips at the tea he had made for her while she was out…convincing her to ease up on the coffee wasn’t easy, but pu’erh had enough caffeine to sustain her, and she didn’t put sugar in it so…small victories…. Her book is open and leaning against the potted cactus she brought home for him after he killed their violets. She’s at peace, finally, and if he’s honest with himself, and if he listens to her and believes her, he has a lot to do with that fact._

Maybe he could go out and get champagne. Put it on ice, light some candles around their bath and get her roses, maybe he could… _It isn’t as if it’s something we don’t do normally,_ he thought. Ripley’s interest in him lessened some in the last couple of months, but he had a strong suspicion that their high-frequency rendezvous was more of a coping mechanism for her than about affection. An hour, give or take, of getting to forget who they were, or to only think of them and not of anything that has happened before or after that moment. He couldn’t blame her for it, but it _did_ make romance less…novel of a thing to do on her birthday. 

Christopher didn’t poke through her belongings so much as curiously examine them. Her workroom had every small tool she could ever want or need. In the bathroom vanity none of her items were low, and she did indulge in scented bath salts now that WY was picking up their bills. There was even a small vial of perfume in the dresser drawer, and a single black nightgown she swore she only had because it was soft and cool to wear in the summer, but as he had witnessed, if it was too warm out she’d just go to bed in her underwear and a loose cami….she did like wearing it, he learned quickly, on nights he had to spend hours working on his programming, or on physical circuitry with his skin opened on his core. He didn’t like her seeing him like that, and usually locked himself into the office until whatever needed done was done. He’d walk out to see her, in the black night dress in the dark on their couch, _with her hair down_ and smiling up at him “ _Want to sit with me?”_ And yet clothing of that variety didn’t seem to appeal much to her when he asked her about it.

She had graph paper and lined paper, a compass, drawing tools, everything she needed for mechanical design and work. She had a plush animal of some kind that had been either so loved or so abused that it’s repairs didn’t allow for species recognition; and she had a plush bear in a space suit he bought her on one of their earlier ‘dates.’ The hideous art print in the living room; a few old posters and post cards. They had bedding, and a spare set of sheets. Ripley always said that there was nothing else they needed. 

He thinks over the other clothing she has; work clothes, one gaudy red dress she got becuase she thought he’d like to see her in something nicer on a date, and nicer (less oil stained) jeans and shirts. A small makeup kit, though he rarely sees her in more than eyeliner (she wears concealer under her eyes, he can see it, but she denies it and he’s wise enough of human socialization at this point to not call her out on her lie). She even had a cheap pair of stud earrings she would wear once in—

That was the only jewelry she had. 

_Maybe_ …

———————–

The jewelry shop in the city center would have been his first choice to find something for her at; but even the cheapest items there were more than she would ever allow him to spend on her. The display of engagement rings in it’s window was also…tempting wasn’t quite the word, ‘taunting’ might have a better connotation of the situation. _It hasn’t been four months you’ve been with her_ … Then again, they were living together, and functioned, for all he was aware of, like a human partnership. If that was even what she considered them. 

There was another place, closer to the tourist traps, that sold….well, it was still _nice_ things but it was the kind of nice that was sold alongside postcards and guidebooks to Luna. Amanda called the shops on that side of the city a ‘kitschy boardwalk.’ And yet, half her antiques and a few posters, and some of her records came from this part of the colony. She’d appreciate it.

An array of charms and earrings and rings shaped like the original moon lander, no. The little vintage space shuttle designs were sweet, and getting closer… But not really her either. The silver plated Weyland-Yutani logo charm was absolutely out of the question. 

Samuels remembers her humming once, he’d woken up her up from a nightmare, she had been shaking. He held her tightly and she quietly hummed the lines of a lullaby, of _Lucky Star_. That was months ago now and though she didn’t care much for pet names, privately that was what he thought of her: a lucky star, a unique one-in-billions event that everything orbited around.

A gold star in the back of the case of necklace pendants glittered; hardly half an inch tall, and on a plain black cord, it matched her personality–at least to his understanding of it.

—————————

“I told you not to do anything,” she said, looking the lowered lights and the cake sitting on their counter bar.

“Hello to you too,” he tried to cross the room to kiss her cheek, but she had already made it to the cake in three long strides.

“I’m sorry–but I meant it you didn’t have to…”

“It’s nothing, really. Normally I try to have dinner ready for you anyway so–”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Didn’t we agree, luv,” he tested just how upset she was by reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear–she didn’t stop him, so she couldn’t be too annoyed, “That if you were going to back to work, I could take care of household duties?”

“I know but… You’re not my housekeeper.”

“All I did was make the cake–” Amanda froze entirely and turned to face him again.

“Whoa, no wait, wait. You _made_ that?”

“Yes?”

“You can do that? Chris how, this is–”

“It wasn’t hard.” 

Amanda inspected the perfect flowers and flawless icing on it, the exact lettering ‘happy birthday Amy’ in curling script. “You’re full of little surprises aren’t you?”

“If you say so. I forgot about dinner I’m afraid,”

“Oh so you _aren’t_ perfect,” she smiled at him, loving the expression on his face that told her if he could blush he would be. _You,_ she thought to herself, _are absolutely getting lucky tonight_.

“Far from it, dear.” It earned him a light kiss before she went for the phone on the wall, “If you’re going to order in, I already called.”

“That vegetarian place you see fit to call ‘take out’ or–”

“The pizza place that you see fit to refer to as food. That one.”

“Okay, so you are perfect,” she said, only half joking as she reached for the silverware drawer; he knew that she would try to cut a slice of cake before dinner arrived. “Chris?”

“Yes?”

“Why is there a present where the big knife should be?”

“Becuase it’s your birthday?”

“I told you–”

“When’s the last time someone did something for you on this day? The last time you actually…enjoyed it? You said yourself that the last few you either forgot or spent at a bar. And,” she looked increasingly bothered at his words and he considered stopping, but he put thought into this, “If it’s within my power to do something for you that could make you happy then I have to do it.”

“Then we have to find a birthday for you too.”

“That isn’t necessary–”

“Yes it is. If mine is, then so is yours.” he didn’t try to argue anymore. “So you want me to open this?”

“If you want,”

“Really if this is–oh…”

“Do you like it?” he asked as she held it up to examine. She turned the star over in her hand, it was barely the size of a fingernail, and engraved on the back in impossibly tiny script.

“It’s perfect…thank you–I can’t see the letters on the back–Sorry, I need my glasses for…” she liked that he chose a black cord too, instead of a gold one.

“They couldn’t personalize something that small, maybe I should have gone with a larger one but I was able to use one of your laser tools. I didn’t think it was that small, just how bad are your eyes?”

“Not that bad but–What’s it say?”

“‘Lucky Star’“

“ _…What?”_

 _“_ I–you were humming it one night until you fell back asleep so I thought–I’m sorry if I got it wrong or if–”

“No it’s…” she was trying hard not to cry at this point, unable to hold back the tears despite avoiding a complete breakdown. “My mom–she used to sing it to me and–When I heard her recording she… That’s the last thing–she sang it for me and…”

“Amy I’m so sorry–I-I didn’t know.” 

Amanda had changed, through what she’d survived, through half a year of accepting (usually) the help he offered, or perhaps she had only grown a little in that instead of doing what she might have done as recently as three months ago and hiding on her own until she had no trace of tears left and then never mention it again.

Instead, she looked over to Christopher’s open arms and took his silent offer.

“I didn’t know…I can fix it, or fix it and then return the whole thing–it doesn’t matter to me, love. You can pick something out inst–”

“No you got it for me!” she sniffled slightly her tight hold on him easing up a little. “You chose it and made it special and put thought into it and..”

“I did mean the sentiment. Beyond your luck at the obvious you are a lucky star to me… If that isn’t too melodramatic or saccharine for you.”

“It is…But you really are the sweetest person I’ve ever met.” She held up the necklace, “Could you put it on me?”she asked; he obliged happily as she thought he would, glad to perform the cliche romantic gesture. 


	34. prompt: when one stops the kiss to whisper “I’m sorry, are you sure you-” and they answer by kissing them more

This is dangerous water.

No synthetic that he was able to find record of survived a relationship with a human–no human either for that matter. True, the causes of demise were usually external–places with traumatic events made for strange bedfellows–but nonetheless he wanted to preserve whatever delicate moth of a connection that fluttered between them.

Only one day left until cryo for a month–he’s already told the captain that he’ll be staying awake, watching everyone’s vitals. Watching Ripley’s. He’ll monitor the ship and if anything at all were to go wrong he’d wake her first and see that she was given the last of their EVAC suits. Where Verlaine said they’d draw for it if things went south, Samuels knew whole mindedly that Ripley would be home alive in five weeks, no matter what he’d have to do. She was the only Weyland-Yutani employee left on the ship, technically; which meant that preservation of her life was one of his primary concerns, as at least as far as programming went. Techncially.

Amanda’s drowsy, wrapped up in both the duvet from her bunk and the one off of his (it is his bunk they’re both on, though he’s sitting up now, going through readouts of his damage. Now and then he reaches behind him to where she’s lying down and rests a hand on her.

“Had a nice dream,” she mumbled; he smiled. It’s only been a couple hours but this was the first in a week she’s slept at all without a nightmare. They’re not gone, he knows that, but any good rest she can get… 

“What was it about?”

“Weyland-Yutani’s headquarters burned to the ground.”

“Who set the fire?”

“Why do you think it was such a nice dream?” 

he reaches over, set the datapad on his desk and goes to lie down with her. This is uncharted seas, the unfamiliar whirlpools and rocks and Scylla are her eyes reaching out as to pull him in and drown him–and he’d be totally willing. This closeness is divine, beyond natural, beyond _nature_ , but it’s only been this. She’ll sleep with him between her and the door; she’ll hold onto him, hug, him, and even kiss his cheek or forehead, but they haven’t even kissed yet.

“I didn’t actually dream of fire. Not that kind anyway,” she said, lifting one of her duvets, untagling herself from the nest she’d rolled into of sheets and letting him in.

“What did you dream about?”

“You.” she said. ( _she didn’t dream of him, not really, but this slow drawn out burn she can’t take any more of, and if shit happens while she’s in cryo, she wants to know what he feels like first)_

“Very boring dream, I like the first one you mentioned,”

“You’re not boring. And dream-you was _definitely_ not boring.” 

“A human cassanova?”

“Not human at all. Just you.”

“Maybe you weren’t dreaming at all,” he tries, and she smiles, biting her lip, _this is flirting_ , and the realization that that’s what he’s doing, and _has_ been doing from their second meeting onward sends a jolt out from his core that he can feel hit every single synthetic touch sensory point in him. Nerves.

She clasps his hand with hers, pulls it up to kiss the back of it.

“I know I wasn’t,”

“How?”

“You were sitting next to me when I was sleeping, right?”

“I was,”

She wriggles closer, wraps him up in her arms and he _knows_ that he’s the stronger of the two even in his damaged state, that if anything this closeness is a danger to both of them, but he feels ( _feels)_ protected, safe. She’s strong for a human of her stature, age, and phsyical category; and he doesn’t doubt that even if he could easily overpower her that given the need she’d be able to destroy him with little effort. 

“Well..In my dream you weren’t next to me.”

“Where was I?”

“Guess.”

“The galley again?”

“Closer.”

“My desk?” she’s getting hotter, or perhaps he is; he’s half convinced some part of his skin is on fire.

“Closer.” She’s lying on the same pillow he is, close enough that her eyes are about all he can see of her. Her noes is touching his and she shifts slightly so hers is to the side. _Oh._

 _“_ Was I…” He’s far from innocent in all his intentions, they both know that, they both feel and think as adults. And he wasn’t ignorant of human wants and behaviors; he heard his name tremble off her lips as he waited outside the shower for her, wanting to be near in case the steam made her light-headed; he knew he wasn’t meant to hear it, and knew better than to confess that he did.

She’s pressed so snugly to him that he can feel the echo of her heartbeat in his own chest cavity.

“Go on,” he hears the smile in her voice, the taunt.

“Was I under you?

“You,” she says, the breath of her words on his lips, “were on top of me.” 

He can’t hide his shock at that, nothing in Ripley’s external personality, nor in this more fragile interior she’s been showing him did he think that there’d be some part of her that didn’t mind giving over control of any situation that involved her directly.

And he’s beyond faulty at this point, and without fully considering how she could react, he turns them over, his weight on his knees and arms; at the same time Ripley adjusted, her legs crossed around his hips, arms around his torso. 

Both stare at each other blankly then for a moment, both shocked at the turn of events, and he realizes that her actions were more muscle memory of having been in this position with someone else. _Jealousy_. But Amanda smiles then and her hold on him tightens more, one of her hands on the back of his neck gently tugging him down.

The fact that he doesn’t know how to kiss doesn’t occur to him until after he gives in, pressing his lips to her smile, but she doesn’t move either and logically he knows that she knows how to do this but perhaps this is too different perhaps this is–

“I’m sorry, are you sure you–”

Amanda’s eyes roll and she leans up to kiss him; she’s guiding and slow, and he’s more than eager to learn this. Synthetics learn quickly. _I could perfect it…in an hour or so…_ He smiles into it, not sure how to laugh either, or if that would even be appropriate here, but he does feel something, and indulges it, turning them both over again so she’s lying on him. 

“I should have known,” she says with a teasing grin.


	35. prompt: a hoarse whisper “Kiss me.”

The walk back from the dive bar isn’t more than twenty minutes, and usually Ripley enjoyed it as a chance to sober up before going home. 

Friday nights with the other workers from the shop wasn’t exactly the same as the small circle of friends she had in her late teens on Terra, nor were these people very fond of her but _someone_ had been pushing for her to go out more and this was at least semi-structured. The shifty music bar had almost nothing in common with the neon venue her live-in housemate-boy/man-friend- person would take her to. That place was classy, safe, almost refined. 

She fit in better at the dive.

Going out on her own and and walking back wasn’t as risky though as her lover had been worried it would be; Ripley knew her limits well and stayed within them, fully aware for the drift home. If she wasn’t feeling great, she’d jump onto the trolley shuttle back to the district of their apartment building.

And she hated to admit it but…it had been _nice_ going there for a while. A flicker of a sense of normality that she wasn’t getting at home; people around her age laughing and telling stories with voices ranging from stone-sober to absolutely trashed. It wasn’t quite like college was, but it was…nostalgic somehow. 

Still, each Friday night, long before last call, she’d find an excuse to leave. Tonight was no different, and she left even earlier than usual with the memory of Samuels worried face at the incompatibility of what was left of his software and the newest mandatory WY update. “ _Amanda what if I…crash.” “You won’t crash.” “I-I’ll be out for a short while at least–I won’t be able to walk you home if you call.” “I’m a big girl I can get home on my own.”_ She didn’t drink tonight either. Samuels would have messaged her if something felt wrong, she told herself. Samuels wouldn’t have interrupted her doing anything more important than checking her email even if he was dying, she replied back to herself.

“I should go,” she said, her half-full glass of soda still; it’d done nothing for her but upset her stomach.

“Come on Rip, Jac here hasn’t even started to embarrass herself yet,” Thompson, the youngest of the shop, possibly no more than nineteen was a relative of the boss, and the only one allowed to get away with saying anything like that about her.

“No, it’s fine I need to–”

“One drink? Just one and I’ll buy it.” Jason, who looked _uncomfortably_ like her first boyfriend, whom she once considered hooking up with after work. Fate sent in an employee of Weyland-Yutani not long after she started considering it though, which put a stop to any thoughts on it she might have still had.

“I don’t want any–”

“Are you feeling alright?” Trixie, the closest to her in age was probably the only one out of the whole shop that had any measure of empathy.

“She’s just eager to get home to the suit,” Jason drank the last of his current bottle of beer, looking about as annoyed to be there still as Ripley felt.

“Suit? Really?” she made a motion to walk away but he continued.

“That guy that keeps walking you to work,”

“That’s not a guy,” Jac interjected, looking back to her crew and away from the barmaid who made Ripley wonder what she ever saw in Jason. “That’s her synthetic, she won him in a We-Yu payout.”

“There’s no _fucking way_ ,”

“He looks just like them!” Trixie protested. Ripley sat back down onto her bar stool, wanting to vanish but unable to move.

“I’ve caught Ripley–… saying bye to him in the morning, they were at the back door of the break room.” Jason said, as if his witness statement would be the deciding factor. 

“I’m with him,” Thompson added, “I heard you’ve got a synth, but that’s your–your something that walks you to work, right?”

Ripley just nodded dumbly. She wanted to go _home_. 

“You look sick, babe,” Trixie made a motion to touch Amanda’s forehead, she leaned back away from her. “You sure you didn’t drink anything? Or leave your bottle alone too long?”

“I didn’t. I’m fine. I don’t know why any of this means shit anyway,” She finally managed to stand up, pushed her drink aside and took her jacket off the hook under the bar.

“Ripley you’re not—?”

“Not what?”

“Trix thinks you’re knocked up.”

“Wait what?”

“Are you?”

“Is it the suit’s?”

“I would have put actual money on you being a lesbian–no offense, Jac.”

“None taken, I would have thought so too.”

“Not that any of you need to fucking know, but I’m here for both sides of the–wait– the _fuck_ –Why do you think I’m knocked up? That’s _not_ possible,” she insisted; zipping up her jacket felt like adding another shield between her and these people, and their questions, all their _questions…_

 _“_ You’re on something right?”

“That’s none of your gddamn business.”

“Harsh.”

Thompson hadn’t said anything in the last minute, but had a distant, mathematic expression on his face. 

Ripley could hear the kid’s gears clicking into place.

“The suit _is_ your synthetic.” he stated.

“Does this matter?”

“It does becuase I know I saw you shove your tongue down his throat last week.”

“Thanks Jason,” Ripley’s claws were out, she felt like a cornered alley cat.

“You didn’t deny it,” Thompson was asking for a broken noes but Ripley held back. “You said ‘not possible.’“

“What do you want me to say?!” 

“Rip–”

“I’m going home,”

———

For this walk home, Ripley truly wished she wasn’t sober.

Maybe no one would remember, or care; maybe they’d keep on teasing her for having a stuffed shirt for a boyfriend and calling her “housewife” every time she left work or the bar early. She could live with that. But there was something very backwards about her relationship as it stood and on some level she thinks both of them know it. Samuels has yet to be eager for the single person at his old office that ever treated him with respect to know about his living arrangements with a human woman. 

And was it so bad to think that either of them could pretend to be normal for what they were long enough to make friends? But now they’ll see her as somehow defective, or deviant, or even an idiot for thinking that a corporate drone was anywhere close to human–even if she knew the truth of it. Explaining it to people, even trying to, would only make it worse.

She’s still worried too about how he handled the updates; she had been so eager to get out of the house, get tipsy with humans her age and not have to try to be the perfect partner, get to choose her carefully constructed shell for the night instead of being around the only being in the galaxy that she was incapable of tricking with masks and careful words.

They were defenseless around each other in ways that bordered on codependent and maybe that’s part of why she wanted some time away from their flat. She didn’t like the lack of privacy. He was unreadable to her, yet he still seemed like he could see right through her skull. It could get infuriating.

At the door to their building she still has an elevator ride and a hallway to go, and highly considers wandering off for a little while longer.

—–

“Amanda?”

“Who the hell else would it be?”

“No one, but…You’re very early.” he was seated on their couch, hurriedly trying to pull his sleeve down over the point where the data cord was pulled in. As if hiding the point of connection would be enough to make her forget what he was. “Did something happen? Are you alright?”

Reading her, clearly and perfectly as always.

“I should be the one asking that. I’m sorry I didn’t stay with you for the updates.”

“It’s fine; and I’m glad you’re home now, becuase I’ll have to sleep for a few hours while they install and–”

“Is there that much of a chance your systems will reject it?”

“They won’t reject it, they’ll only crash if it’s no longer fully compatible.”

“You didn’t say that before?!” She turned around from the fridge where she had been trying to find her last beer, and Samuels looked guilty.

“I…did tell you? You assured me that I wouldn’t crash, and I know that you have an awareness of my systems but you aren’t a software engineer and–”

“I thought you were just being anxious! If I thought that this was life or death then I wouldn’t have gone to a fucking bar!”

“Amy,” he started softly as he watched her pop the cap off her beer on the side of their kitchen counter, “What happened tonight?”

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing, please… Let someone in.”

“Christopher you don’t seem to grasp the special case that you are, and how little normally people usually get into my life. You’re the first person I brought into my apartment in over a year. If I wanted to– I normally stayed at someone else’s place. You have more access to me in every definition of the word than anyone has in a long, long time. If I want to keep one, small thing out of your sight then _let me_.”

“Did someone hurt you?”

“Did you hear _anything I just said?!”_

 _“Yes,_ however if you’ve been insulted or even injured I’d like to know–”

“No–You’ll find out eventually anyway, and right now I want to sleep and forget it.”

“Is there anything that I can do, or tend to that would–”

“You could stop being a medic droid for five minutes and try act like you live here and not work here.” It was cold steel she just shoved through him and on some level she knew it and regretted it before saying it. 

Realizing that there was very little chance of her forgetting for any time at all tonight that he was what he was; he rolled his sleeve up again. A faint yellow light below the skin where the cord attached shifted to green and he pulled the cord. It was small, smaller than the cords used to charge their datapads, and instead of a plug on the end there was a needle, a superfine point jack connection meant to go into the skins so that ports could be fully hidden on the androids.

Injury to insult.

“I’ll have to sleep soon. And I’m…” He had hoped she’d go to bed with him, hold close so that if this was it, then her presence would be the last sensation he’d have.

“It’s your room too, you don’t have to ask permission,”

“Will you be coming?”

“…Fine.” 

——

This isn’t the first time that Ripley’s retreated into herself, but in the past months when it happened he’d been able to busy himself with something, anything, in the main room, letting her simmer down overnight. Mornings she was back to normal. 

“I’m sorry I know that you don’t want–”

“Samuels I didn’t say I don’t want you here.” _last name_.

“You’re upset with me.” it wasn’t a question, but his voice ticked to almost make it one when he watched Amanda strip graceless down to underwear and pull her bra out from under her tshirt. 

“I am,” she didn’t bother dressing in nightclothes, just going straight to bed, facing the wall.

“…I didn’t want to frighten you with the odds or guilt you into postponing whatever it is that you’re trying to process but–It’s more likely than not that if I wake up it won’t be with my memories…or self…complete.”

“Why can’t you ever just tell me the truth and not–”

“Becuase the less I have to act like a ‘droid’ around you the better.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine; I understand that this isn’t–….typical.”

She’s quiet, but the slowing of his systems scares her, and she knows it’s more likely than not just his anxiety and that he’ll be fine but–

“They found out.”

“About us?”

“About us..and you.”

“…I don’t know how to apologize for that, or even respond at all.”

“Some of them guessed you were my boyfriend, others guessed you were the synthetic that I’m on record of owning, and then someone put the two together.”

“Amanda–”

“I’m sorry.”

“ _I’m_ sorry–”

“Can we just..?” she’s ready to cry, and in her voice is wavering between wispy and hoarse. She turns around to face him, and she’s always surprised how much more human he looks up close, and how much more artificial he feels up close. He’s both. 

“You’re the one who said this wasn’t going to be normal or easy,” he brushes at a tear that falls down and across her face; she never washed off the eye liner she had put on before leaving and it started to blur. He’d wash the pillow cases in the morning if he was still sound enough to do so. “After…everything, I have no expectations, only a little hope that this keeps going.”

“I swear I’m trying for–”

“Not for me. You don’t have to; do it for yourself, luv…”

“Kiss me”

He looks confused, even in this dim light she can tell.

“Chris?” he doesn’t answer her, but leans into her nonetheless and kisses her gently. “I do love you, even when I’m mad.”

“I know,” he answers, as drowsy sounding as he can get, and carefully, slowly enough that she can push away if she wanted, he holds her closer.


	36. prompt: being unable to open their eyes for a few moments afterwards.

This isn’t the first kiss, fourth, fiftieth.

Still, he’s thinks for the millionth time that he’s glad he can’t blush, that his synthetic pokerface is so steady becuase there are people here and he can’t _not_ be…bashful, to say the least, about being seen kissing Ripley in front of their friends.

 _Their friends_. 

She draws back, kisses him again, quickly, lightly, and she’s hugging him tight, and he’s holding her too. It takes him a minute to open his eyes and smile sheepishly at the audience over her shoulder.

“That’s it then,” Zula said, wheeling back away from one of the eight computer screens temporarily set up in their living room. “The data should copy out into all the systems at once, and I’d give it a full day before you try to actually use it, but I’d get the IDs updated no later than next week.”

“They’re solid though, my guy know’s his shit,” Ripley’s boss, a short, stocky blond woman who worked alongside her mechanics and engineers handed over an envelope thick with false documents. “Get new ones made next week–Rip file for the name change before work Monday–”

“ _Monday_? I only have off until _Monday?”_ It was a solid four days off.

 _“_ Finish the Titan lander and then you’re free to go until the following week,”

“Good.” She looked briefly at the screens set up on the table, then over to the kitchen counter: Zula and Davis brought a bottle each of vodka, whiskey, and champagne. The kid (who was Ripley’s age really, but enough of a geek that he exuded a sense of being several years younger) had brought a cake from the grocery store decorated with generic white frosting roses. “So we can open all of that now right?”

“Up to you, both of you,” Jac understood, she really did, but from the day she found out about Amanda’s partner she’d been slow to adjust to acknowledging them both.

“If you’d like, Amy.”

“Mr. Ripley,” she grinned; he squeezed her hand. She looked very lovely. Weeks ago he couldn’t hide the disappointment at the idea of her being ‘married’ in jeans and a tshirt while Zula and Davis hacked multiple census and civil records to list one Christopher McClaren as an actual human, and file that he and one Amanda Ripley were married in international space territory by a ship’s captain (Verlaine, not present, but willing to back their story up entirely). She surprised him this morning; when he left their room in rather formal clothing (” _That’s a tux,” “It’s a button down shirt, black pants and a black jacket. It’s not a tux.”)_ by appearing out of her work room, arms full of computer components for the day’s illegal activities, dressed in a white gown that fell off her shoulders and stopped at her knees. 

“Are we taking your name?”

“You have two last names already, I’m hyphenating mine but you can do whatever you’d like,” she kissed his cheek again, she’d been doing it all day, bestowing random bits of affection onto him, unable to let go of him for too long. She barely let go of his hand. 

Zula and Davis were getting down plates, glasses, the other few attendants descending on the the tray of cookies Decker’s girlfriend had made.

Amanda gently tugged on her husband’s sleeve and said quietly at his ear:

“Just tell me when you’ve had too much of this, and we’ll kick them all out,”

“Thank you. I don’t mind this though. And I do get you to myself often enough,”

“We’ll go somewhere, Mars, or someplace on Terra. Wherever you want,”

“I love you,”

Jac looked back over at them, 

“Save it for later and cut the cake before one of us does.”

Christopher led his wife to the kitchen by her hand, admiring the blush that she finally couldn’t control.


	37. you wish you could dream of something so mild as electric sheep

"

Can you dream?” 

The question doesn’t strike him as odd, not anymore. Ripley was healing very slowly, but as she did, as she finally sloughed off more layers of armor, he was getting glimpses at her full personality. As she grew more relaxed she had taken to asking him random questions; icebreakers, getting to know you questions. They were usually playful, sentimental, sometimes teasing, or genuinely curious about him, about how he ticked. It showed how comfortable she had become in his company and he enjoyed it. Likewise, the longer he was away from Weyland-Yutani’s offices, the more he felt…almost natural in this setting–whatever setting it currently was.

Right now, it was helping Ripley was her model of the main ship from 2088′s _Star Trek_ game series. She was building it, while he painted the details on. She found the box of the half-finished model when they were getting her things from the storage unit; she had never had the time to finish it in the past. Samuels doesn’t break focus from the very small ion thrusters he’s painting (inaccurate, in an actual vessel they would knock the ship out of alignment, but he was quiet on that). 

“I can,” he smiled.

“What do you dream about?”

“I dreamed that one day you and I might be sitting at your coffee table painting a tiny plastic spaceship,”

“I meant,” she smiled, almost chuckled, “Sleeping dreams. When you’re–shut down, or in partial power.”

“Oh. Yes, I can dream.”

“Alright, but _what_ do you dream about? Memories? Nonsense?”

“Electric sheep.”

“You aren’t funny.”

“Would you like to file formal complaint the parent company, or submit a suggestion to increase the baseline for a sense of humor on future models?”

“ _Ass_.” she’s trying so hard not to laugh at him, and he can hear it in her voice even as he doesn’t look away from his hyper-focus on the part in his hand. “If I said anything it would be ‘ease up on their ability to employe sarcasm.’“

“You would have them strip me of my only true strength?”

“Just for that? _Yes_. Come on, dreams. What do they look like to you?”

“Dull, abstracts of waking programs playing on half-power,” he said, mastering a flat tone even when nano-second clips, images, of various dreams came pouring back

 _Ripley with handprints on her throat, head hung an an unnatural angle. Ripley gored through and glass eyed on the station floor like so, so many others were. Dreams he mistook for reality, of continuations of their nights, Amanda body and soul bare and vulnerable as his hands on their own accord tighten around her neck and she’s strong but not enough to break his grip_.

“You can’t dream in narrative then?”

“It has it’s perks; I don’t have nightmares either.” 

“Lucky,” she said, quieter than she had been. He wanted to rescind and tell her the truth, that he feels for her, understands what she’s been going through but nightmares were one of the few things that so far, he was completely there to help her with. They both had injuries, jitters, occasional bouts of panic at unexpected noises, and he had his mechanical errors. She had nightmares. There was their trade off on helping one another, and it’s nonsense, he knows that, to think that it would really change too much but she’d press him to tell her about his dreams the same way that he did to her, and he didn’t want to tell her. Her android-finger-shaped bruises had only just faded; he wasn’t going to remind her that she was living with someone one bad glitch away from hurting her again, or worse.

“What are we doing with the model when it’s done?”

“I don’t know; I don’t think I ever thought I’d get a chance to finish it.”

“Once the glue’s dry, I could hang it on the planter hook in the kitchen.”

“I didn’t think you were the handy type. I like that idea though.”

“Thank you,”

“Always.”


	38. More Random Prompts

**Name something they would never do for the other person.  
**

Amanda would never be the one to handle major updates. For minor fixes, general upkeep…well, she has an engineering degree and more than basic hands-on experience with synthetics, why bother going to a lab? Dealing with their questioning glances and assumptions and judgements…No, no, they’d rather take care of it themselves. 

However, when Samuels needed his memory core installed in a new body, they both grit their teeth and found an independent lab that specialized in synthetics. Ripley stayed through the procedure, monitored it carefully through a window becuase she needed to know she was getting him back and not a copy ( _I’d know, she tries to tell herself, I’d know if it was only a copy because even if we don’t have them I know he has a soul and I’d know if it was missing.)_

Samuels would never follow one very specific set of orders that she made him swear to.

“Find someone younger,” she told him; begged him that when she finally looked too old to be his partner that he wouldn’t stay around out of responsibility. Put her in a home, and find a life with someone else. He’d never. Realistically, he knows it’s possible that there very well could be others out there now or in the future that he’d be able to love, but Ripley was the _first_ one. And if he was lucky enough to find forever the first time… Anyone else would either pale in comparison to her, or worse, what if he found someone even more suited for him, that he loved more? The concept was as repellant to him as his own death.

Her death on the other hand…

Her will, that she told him he would be legally bound to follow, included strict orders that should the shell program be available–even as an experiment–at the time of her death, he was not under any circumstances to put her in one. The money, the risks, the unnaturalness of it; Ripley lived as a human, and would die as one, and like so many other widowed spouses, hers would find someone else or perhaps another pursuit or purpose to fill his time.

Samuels found it rather selfish of her to want him to be alone. If anything ever were to happen to her that put her life at risk, and the shell was an option, he would destroy any and all records that she ever held an option on it. As legal next of kin (and so he was at this point in the census records, forged of course, but it was still there) he’d be the one to tell them _Yes._

If the shells weren’t ready yet, then he’d request cryo for her until they were. 

And it’s only fair, she refused to allow him to die, he can only do the same.

**23\. Write a ~300 scene between them with no dialogue, only body language.**

**(okay so I wrote about 600 words of exposition and still didn’t get to the prompt itself, and it kept getting more and more miserable so let’s go with this instead)**

It was just one patch job. One. Simple. Job. It shouldn’t have gone this badly, and if it _did_ it should have been laughed off, but his panicked _ass overreacted, got angry, then apologetic, then morose, and now this again…_

Samuels was still standing at their counter going through a thousand different pages on the release of the new patch, and exactly how and why it could have caused him to lose the ability to speak. Not exactly accurate, so far he had found and showed her (tapping on the countertop to get her attention from the living space across the center room) that he wasn’t unable to speak, but unable to connect his central command system to his vocalizer.

Nine months into cohabitation, and they were mostly (she was mostly) comfortable and adjusted to his technical functions and needs, but to him any slight reminder that she was aware of what he was sent him on a downward spiral into himself. Amanda had tried earlier, edging him back towards the sofa; if his mouth was occupied then no one would notice he wasn’t talking. 

Apparently, he hadn’t been interested in making out like repressed teenagers.

Fine then, she’d let him wait out his misery until the _another_ patch came out from the labs to fix this line of fucked up coding. An hour after she figured that, she felt a wave of guilt at his nerve-ridden expression as he tapped the refresh button for the hundredth time, his posture so straight it was painful to look at.

She sighed, stretched a little, and slumped back into the couch. A minute.

Leaning forward, she sighed again, exaggeratedly, and he looked up. Poor bastard looked utterly miserable. He raised an eyebrow at her, his lips parted slightly like he had _almost_ tried to speak again. Ripley shrugged in silence, earning her a confused look over. She smiled, shivered a little (it was unseasonably cold, she’d send him to Luna’s climate control department with a note of that), and snuggled into the back of the couch. There was a slight whir of his respirator as he breathed out, picked up his datapad from the counter and moped so formally to her side that she would have laughed if she witnessed it on someone else. She did smile though; he shot her a pointed glance, sat as bolt-right as he was standing at the counter, and went back to staring at his screen.

Ripley turned sideways and leaned back into the arm of the couch, her legs pulled up in front of her. Samuels, with all the emotion of an eye roll without the actual action of it reached an arm out, and Ripley scooted over under it, tucking herself in close next to him. His brows were still knit tightly; Ripley chewed on her lower lip. Usually touch was enough to melt him.

A short, annoyed breath ( _drama queen, he doesn’t need to breathe..)_ and he held up the datapad, words punched out.

W H Y A R E N’ T Y O U T A L K I N G

She laughed, bit her lip, and shrugged. This time he did _actually_ roll his eyes at her, but he couldn’t keep his grimace; the corner of his mouth twitched, and she moved upright, gently pushing him forward so she could climb behind him. There’s confusion in his eyes as he looked over his shoulder back at her; she dug her hands into his shoulders; she pressed into synthetic muscles. The left shoulder joint was stiff; he could probably use another dose of fluid, but she wasn’t about to make him meditate anymore on his nature today than he already had to.

It took a minute or so, but eventually he relaxed under her touch; she gently worked at the muscles that met at his steel alloy spine, and rubbed at their connective points. They’ve been together long enough, she’s studied his likes and dislikes with him enough, and studied books on his make and model on her own enough to know what feels the best. A few more minutes of it and he shifts away from her enough to meet her eyes, if only briefly. He knows that she’s doing all of this, including the silent treatment to lift his mood, to show that she doesn’t mind, and it’s overwhelming for him to be the center of so much emotional effort. He opens his arms, and she accepts the request–and it is a request, if it was an offer he would be more confidant, sitting up straighter; this was him asking to be held, not showing he was there if she wanted to be. 

Ripley hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek; she smiled at him drawing back enough to see his genuine, finally brighter smile.

The datapad buzzed, and they both looked down, 

“Code Patch 98.7.21 Revision Available.” was blinking on the alerts bar at the top of the screen.

“Come on, I can move your computer out here to connect if you want,” she said.

He shook his head, and at her puzzled expression tugged her back to him; his heavy lidded eyes read carefully _a few more minutes_ …

**2\. If they could each describe each other in one sentence, what would it be?**

Chris about Amanda: “A headstrong, disorganized, obstinate person who’s intelligence and beauty are unfairly overlooked becuase of those first three traits.” ~~(Ripley: “I can’t tell if that was rude or if you’re trying to get laid.”)~~

Amanda about Chris: “Thoughtful, level headed, and kind to a fault.” (she’s much less wordy than he is.)  
  
 **6\. What is/are their love language(s)?  
**

(funny you ask this one bc I just found out what a love language is today)

Amanda likes physical touch. They both do, but she does more–which initially surprised her companion, as he thought she’d shun too much contact even in a relationship. And it isn’t only intimacy either, one of the reasons he’s confused when she accuses him of being clingy is that…she is. She’s very clingy when they’re home, she likes to cuddle up to him, or lie close to him as she falls asleep. Hell she even likes holding hands. PDA, not so much, but touch is an anchor and a sense of safety for her.

Christopher appreciates touch, perhaps being the only person Amanda’s met that’s gone longer without it than she has, but more than that he likes acts of service. He’s been built and designed to make everyone else’s lives easier, to do the work no one else wants to do, and he enjoys it. He likes to feel useful and needed, but when Amanda _insists_ that she takes care of the dishes, or that time that he was out late and she actually (attempted) to iron his shirts, or even just _helps_ him with household chores…she sees him as just another person, another human, on any level, and even though many of the tasks would be easier for him to do, or he could do faster, she still tries to help. Most people would think helping a synthetic is a waste of money. Amanda doesn’t even think about it, automatically joining him as she would a human housemate. 

**1\. What are things they both find funny?**

They both have a _very_ dark and genuinely messed up sense of humor resulting from what they’ve been through. Short of someone _actually_ getting hurt, of course. Amanda’s grandparents were very dry with their jokes, so she’s sensitive to when someone’s making one, even if other in the room don’t notice it; Samuels wouldn’t have been able to develop a louder sense of humor without humans at his office wondering if something ‘strange’ was going on, so his is very subtle too. Nowadays when they’re out with people who don’t know, the humor and the accent just help their story that she met him in WY’s British headquarters. I don’t think I actually answered the question in that, but I don’t have a sense of humor at all (I wasn’t born with one, fun fact, it says so on my hospital discharge papers) so this was the best I have on that.

**15\. What are traits they dislike in one another?  
**

Ripley thrives in organized chaos. Meanwhile, she once borrowed Christopher’s nice fountain pen, and put it back about three centimeters away from where he left it, and he noticed. Most issues are fixed by him using the spare room for an office that he can organize however he likes (though the following April Fool’s Day Amanda moved _everything_ in the office a fraction of an inch to the left of where it had been and enjoyed his highly distraught state). 

Also: Ripley’s fixit for any time that her super-repressed mental issues start to resurface is going 110% into her work and self-isolating herself. Well how is anyone supposed to help her then? She prefers to be left alone and it worries him, she doesn’t take care of herself and refuses to let him even try. On the other side of her workroom door, she’s annoyed that he treats her like an invalid, trailing her around like a lost puppy or a mother hen instead of a partner.

**27\. Do they have any kinks/fetishes that they share?**

and again we’ll just put the cut right here…

None that either were aware of at first, there was a bit of a…learning curve. Ripley had never been someone’s absolute first (she’d been a female shipmate’s first time with a woman, but that was as close as she’d been). Nor had she ever been with a man before that was so…hesitant _or_ eager to please rather than get his own and get going. Christopher _wanted_ to learn though, and as time goes on, she finds that they both still prefer her on top of him, and he’s still _a bit_ vanilla. Not that she minds. This is nice. Gentle. 

She _knows_ he’s not always so restrained though, and it takes some encouraging to get him there but he’ll let go sometimes, and system failure sounds nearly certain going by the static in his voice, and the slight static-electric shocks here and there _those are nice…_

At first, he hated it, hated being reminded of what he was even here, not being able to provide with the illusion that he was human. Now though he loves it, there’s no hiding that it’s him, it’s what he is, but Ripley seems to _enjoy_ it, a _lot_. Not just in an affectionate or reassuring way either; she couldn’t fake those kinds of physical reactions without him knowing they weren’t real. Eventually he figured out how to control the static-electric shocks, but not his voice; that still sounds like he’s glitching but he’s beyond being worried about it considering that it always makes Amanda smile like : _I broke you :)_

**8\. What were their first impressions of each other?**

Ripley’s we got to see a bit of. Her first reaction to him is one of my favorite reactions we get from her in any of the cut scenes. I found it so funny the first time (and fourth) time I saw it. She figured out at some point that he was, in fact, not a human, but still trusted him and seemed to like him enough to defend him to Taylor in a cut bit of dialogue. Taylor is, even in the finished game script, supposed to seem “suspicious” of Samuels and his motives (source: AI art book), but in the cut line of Amanda’s she tells her kindly but firmly that it wasn’t strange to have a synth on board. 

Her impression by the end of that first meeting must have been that regardless of his human status, he was genuine, trustworthy, organized* and capable. Maybe even kind.

*I tend to think “not as organized as everyone assumes” because…he took until the last possible minute to invite her on the trip? That’s not something an organized person does unless the company made him wait that long to increase the chances of him a) being more desperate to convince her, and b) Amanda agreeing to tagging along.

Samuels likes her. I don’t think his first impression of her (in person) matched the image he had in his head of her when he read her file; she’s tougher, stronger, more alive than he imagined her. Less grieving and more coping, less tragic figure and more survivor. More independent. He liked her. He’s friendly with her and (maybe?) even joking–if she knew he was a synth his comment about not needing sleep suddenly becomes dryly funny. 

His first impression was that he underestimated just how many dimensions she had to her, and just how many of those dimensions were walls that had to be worked through.

**11\. What causes them to fight?**

The romantic melodrama of Samuels depressive spirals of self-loathing/fear for what he is, and his insistence that Amanda find better wore off after a year. The first couple times it came up there were arguments, but they almost _always_ ended in some form of reassuring affection. Two or three years in and he on ocassion still suggests she get to know that new person at work a little better, and she _loses her mind. “_ What would you do if I did? No, seriously, how would you react?” because she thinks at some level he doesn’t really mean it, he just hates himself, which is a very human issue. It’s cyclical fight that usually ends up dragging up other points of debate between them, keeps going until it’s so bad that Samuels is actually afraid, or Amanda is too tired. 

**24\. What is something they have each had to forgive the other for?**

Ripley’s used to being alone, and she’s very self-isolating, so even when she craves connections with people, or really cares about someone, it’s… _difficult_. She pushes people away, and Samuels, not being used to having anyone that wants to be around him isn’t great at understanding the complexity of her both wanting to be alone, but wanting companionship as well. To her he comes across as needy, clingy and she’s told him as much before. They both have to forgive the other for their poor communication skills in the beginning, and for a little while after too. Samuels because he’s never had the chance to learn, and Ripley becuase she’s so out of practice with being part of a couple.

**26\. What are their favorite parts about physical affection/sex?**

….let’s just put the cut here

He asked her once, what she liked so much about it, and she–about as suggestive as she was capable of–answered she likes he feeling of him, the fit of him, his intuitive nature as it applies to learning _very_ quickly what works for her and how to do it best; she likes that she’s the only person to get these reactions out of him, to hear the sounds he makes. Naturally he didn’t start out as anything even close to a good lover, but he was always attentive and caring, and eager to learn and to please, becoming better and better at a pace so impressive she had to force herself to do anything else. Surprisingly, he’s also not bad (read: very good) with his hands. And mouth.

She asks him too, but regrets it; aside from a bluntly stated ‘mutual climax’ he doesn’t talk about sex. He likes holding her close after any form of intimacy, he likes that she sighs softly every time she finally finds a comfortable position with him to fall asleep in. Getting to casually hold her hand in public places; a hug and a kiss being granted every time one of them walks into their flat. Little things that once seemed impossible: his learned instinct to put an arm around her shoulders when she leans into him on the couch. He enjoys sexual activities (more than he lets on), and even requests it, but there’s a very out-of-mind feeling to it, one that doesn’t allow him to fully appreciate the sense of being alive and loved and in love. Touch in all its forms is a curious and fascinating thing to him, and so is she. Combined, he likes to hold her and be held, enjoying the wonder and the peace and the sense of…sanity and security that the closeness brings.


	39. Valentine's HC's and More Things Like That

Amanda’s not a romantic person and very much shuns any kind of special attention or treatment: the star necklace that Christopher got her for her birthday ended up leading to a massive argument. It takes…more or less the full year of being with him before she adjusts to it–forgiving herself for what happened at the station, and realizing that she’s deserving of the affections he’s always trying to (in her mind) smother her with. Christopher finds the nice middle ground of romanic partnership somewhere between “professional relationship” and “obsessive” but also sometimes…can’t help himself.

He’s not human, and he isn’t sure how exactly to let her know the extend of his _feeling_ that’s indescribable even to himself. 

Valentine’s Day is…well, going out for it isn’t exactly special, all those couples, and everyone people watching all the other couples, or else just…Amanda and Christopher aren’t ones for PDA–partaking in it or witnessing it.

They stay home. They make dinner together, and he might even taste some of it; they’ll have a nice wine, and Amanda will pull him either towards the bath, their room, or just the couch in the main room and—

she doesn’t like Valentine’s Day sex all that much; between the knowledge that half the city is currently do the same thing, and the fact that it’s _expected_ of people in a relationship to do it. So she cuddles up close (that’s what it is, she just avoids using the words ‘cuddle’ and ‘snuggle’ with him, and they talk, they watch a movie, they play cards even though neither of them are very good at it. 

I don’t know if they’d exchange gifts; they’re both rather bad at receiving them despite really liking to give to the other. If they do it’s little things, simple ones. Office supplies/work shop supplies that are better than what they would get for themselves, that sort of thing.

ANONYMOUS ASKED

✿ - I went there. For both of them.

**✿ - Sex headcanon  
**

**I will never know if I have one anon that keeps sending in these (out of all the options), or if all of you are this thirsty.**

**A note: I thrive off of everyone’s reactions, and would love to see them.**

my asexual ass is running out of headcanons on this subject, so I’m sorry if there are some repeats.

My gut instinct is always “Samuels is abso-fucking-lutely the sub” but also, they’re both in a complex situation in the bedroom because hey, this simple thing that should be about us and just for each other is now about trust, mutual fears, self esteem, past traumas, differing levels of experience, and just….they both have a tendency to _not_ tell the other when something is bothering them and their communication skills aren’t any better here then elsewhere. Time can go on, things change, and then they’re probably taking turns in who’s leading ~~I mean they both like her on top but a change up now and then is nice.~~

They’re….kind of vanilla. Amanda doesn’t get into the handcuffs, blindfolds, twisty unnatural positions. The most interesting things that they’ve done were a) when he found her vibrator in a box of junk from her last apartment and the poor bastard asked her what it was and that ended up taking half the afternoon, and b) that time that he did his homework (a lot of it) and asked “Could I–try something different?” and slooooowly kissed his way down between her legs and “ _how the FUCK did you learn that???!”_

Androids have very realistic and dexterous tongues, apparently.

Ripley once tried to return the favor, assuring him it was relatively normal, that she didn’t mind, and that it would feel good for him. Despite the fact of him going from 0-100 in record time, the sensation bothered him. Maybe becuase it wasn’t something he was previously aware of–his knowledge of sexual behavior in humans limited to biological functions alone–or becuase having a human in a subservient position for so long, when it wasn’t giving her anything, or doing anything really for her felt wrong on a basic programming level. 

Oh, and once they reached a better comfort level with it, they went at it like rabbits for a while. It wore off, Amanda feels like an old woman becuase she’s more excited at “BED! WARM! COZY!” and cuddling up to the walking space heater than sex on most nights. Most. 

…Half.

PS: Christopher Samuels is a fucking liar who has told her on multiple occasions that he doesn’t ever feel “horny,” that he’s somehow beyond that. Amanda Ripley once indulged in a bit of sadism of just happening to not be in the mood for it for _weeks._ He never asked, if anything he was worried that they now had some new distance between them that hadn’t been there before, that he had done something, said something– _said something_ ….Then he figures out what she’s doing. It’s _childish_. But fine. Fine by him. They both gave up the same evening out, and barely made it to the door of their flat. 

They got to the hallway.


	40. MORE ASKS

**☮ - friendship headcanon**

If you ask her: she doesn’t need anyone, she’s fine.

If you watch her: Amanda is relatively desperate for companionship. She started telling Zula her life story during their first meeting, she goes from “fuck this guy” to _actually being trusting enough to show sorrow_ with Samuels in about 25 seconds. I haven’t timed it, but that cut scene wasn’t a minute long so that’s a very quick 180.

I myself keep falling into writing her as a relatively miserable, grumpy person, but I don’t know why so many who write her do that? Even Brian Wood in _Resistance_ has been giving her a colder, more direct voice. But _why_?

During the game Amanda’s soft, she tries to be friendly with Samuels (enough! to make! a joke!), she attempts to have a conversation with Taylor even though Taylor is very obviously not having it at the moment. I’d love to read that scene as a film script so I could see Ripley’s face because I want to know if Ripley is so bad at reading people* that she didn’t know Taylor was in no mood to talk, or if she stuck around becuase she wanted Taylor to apologize, or if she was just _that desperate_ that she was going to keep talking until Taylor eased up.

That all being said, she’s a good friend. Just because she’s bad at keeping them doesn’t mean that she’s not loyal, kind, or patient with people that she admires. She’s just…bad at communication, is always afraid she’s dragging others down, and often thinks that they’re thinking poorly of _her._

**21\. How have they changed each other for the better/for the worse?  
**

**Better:**

There’s a certain…calmness that Ripley has when she’s at home now. It isn’t a lack of energy or passion for her interests, or even “settling down.” It’s _security_. She feels safe, comforted by the presence of someone she cares about and who cares about her. She’ll work on her projects, she’ll read, hell, she actually watches saturday morning cartoons (though given Luna’s time, they air late Friday night). Once she would do things frantically and sporatically, alway worried about completing something on time or forgetting to put something away or missing some– her partner cannot forget anything. Her anxiety has been alleviated for the most part.

Samuels is on the other side of that with the fact that he’s grown almost restless around her; while he was once passive and uninspired, he now gets bored easily. He’s grown fond of film and literature, and eventually makes vague attempts at writing for himself out of a want to _do_ things rather than just complete tasks. Amanda encourages him; as a desk worker he was a computer, doing the same things over and over with different data plugged in: different names, different stations, different numbers…. Being a human throughout the day requires many different _kinds_ of activities, many of which take some trial and error to learn perfectly.

**Worse:**

Ripley used to sleep in whenever she could, nine in the morning being about as late as she’d ever allow herself to go, not wanting to adjust to normal hours once the weekend was over. Now though, she hates getting out of bed. And it isn’t becuase of sex, and it isn’t even entirely about romantic feelings either. Christopher is _warm_. Their bed is warm and cozy, and in the summer he’ll go out of his way to keep his output at a lower temperature, in which case he’s cool and relaxing to touch, and under _no_ circumstances is she going to willingly leave that. ~~She also spends the first year of their relationship a _bit_ codependent, but neither of them are exactly health, and they both move on from it.~~

Samuels never once felt argumentative with another human that wasn’t trying to give him orders that went against his sense of morality that, despite WeYu’s best efforts, was actually that of a good person. Then he started living with Amanda. She’s bitterly stubborn, and yes, that was one of the first things he found attractive about her, but he was unprepared to come against that force on a _daily_ basis. She’s lived alone for a long time and she’s stuck in her ways, and despite her patience sometimes his habits knock up against her own and _someone has to give_ and who’s habits are going to be easier to change? the ones that are 26 years old or the ones that are around seven? She’ll bicker with him easily, and sometimes it’s lightherated, flirty, sometimes it’s _I am doing this my way or so help me…._ Instead of just letting it go, and despite his library of knowledge of the human mind _he gets stubborn right back_.

**30\. Write a short exchange of dirty talk between them.**

**I am so incredibly sorry for not taking this seriously _._ And short? I don’t know the meaning of that word.**

The first month or two, half of their conversations or more turned back around to the fact that he wasn’t the same as she was; he was trying to remind her, she was trying to show him she didn’t care. After that, it wasn’t talked about at all if it could be helped: he didn’t charge when she was around, ran updates overnight, she talked about his wellbeing in human terms when analogies worked (”Headache again?” she asked to reference one of his recurrent glitches that made close focus exceptionally overwhelming). If it became necessary to talk about him in terms of being an android it was a tense and uncomfortable conversation, one neither of them wanted to have, and one that left them both feeling incredibly guilty.

But somewhere around their 1.5 year mark….something changed. They started to get more open about it. Slowly at first, yes, but it kept going. They were joking about it, he liked teasing her about her childhood crush on Data (”You have a _type.”_ ) and she liked that he trusted her enough to help him with upkeep. ~~And she absolutely liked his vocal glitch he almost always got during orgasm~~. He in turn felt a bit of…pride once again in what he was; as long as he was up to date, he was one of the most complex computers known to man, the most advanced tech in history, nearly perfect in any mathematical or logical problem he could face, and on top of it all, he was Amanda’s husband. Very proud of that last one. 

Amanda wasn’t _bored,_ exactly, but she liked the shirt he was wearing, and liked that look of being lost in thought he had when he was trying to write: both very human and not human at once. The glasses she suggested that he wear when they’re out are forgotten on his face; he didn’t need them, obviously, but he’d left them on for some reason. She used to find them dorky as hell, but in this light, with those clothes, and his hair this length, and maybe she was a little randy, they looked _really, really_ good. 

“Hey,” she never said she was good at the whole seduction thing. Usually her asking if he was interested was nonverbal. Or tactlessly direct. 

“Mm?” He looked up, looking around as his eyes adjusted to the glasses again and he took them off.

“Nothing, just wondered what you were working on,”

“Writing. It’s awful,” she smiled at him, at on the arm of his chair and put her arm around his shoulders.

“My tortured artist.”

“I’m hardly either of those. What exactly are _you_ doing?”

“Thinking.”

“…About?”

“Whether or not you’re usb compatible.”

“That’s…a random and unsettling thing to ask. Though, technically speaking it’s very likely that I–”

“Because if you are…I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“If you’d like to put your drive in my port.”

“…What now?”

“Nevermind.”

“Oh no, I know what you meant but really, Amy?” he can’t laugh without running hundreds of codes at once, and doesn’t bother much with it when it’s just them. She knows from his smile and the crinkle of his eyes when he’s laughing in his mind, and he was now, horribly.

“That was awful.”

“Not the worst, but yes, awful.”

“Sorry, I’m bored. You look good tonight.”

“I’m a boredom fix?”

“You’re not romantic,”

“Drive is better than joystick at any rate,”

“I was drunk! We agreed to never mention that!” a night to the bar with her friends gone horribly wrong, a few well-intended rounds of shots to lower the tension led to her rant about his abilities, most of which she was able to get out before he clapped his hand over her mouth (” _You licked me!” “Want me to lick the joystick too?” “Time to go home.”)_ He’d made her drink a glass of water and sent her to bed to sleep it off, against her complaints.

“I know, but you’re terrible at suggestive dialogues.”

“Why did I pick you?”

“I’m still suspect that you knew I could theoretically last as long as you wanted.”

“You know I didn’t,”

“I _do_ but your expression is…very cute,” he lifted one of her hands and kissed the back of it. She blushed. She’d never seen someone kiss anyone else’s hand, ever. Certainly no one ever did it to her before she met him.

“Let me rephrase it then,”

“Go ahead,”

“Any interest in carrying me to our room, getting me out of this ugly uniform, and fucking me until I only remember your name?”

“If you can return the favor until I start seeing low battery warnings, _absolutely.”_

**☠ - angry/violent headcanon for Samuels**

OH NO

So, despite the fact that synthetics shouldn’t be able to harm humans, I figure we’re all relatively in agreement that either a) that isn’t 100% true 100% of the time, or b) Samuels was fried enough that that no longer meant anything. Of course, it means _nothing_ in regards to non-humans. 

And buddy sure did have a lot of pent up rage in him when he killed the working joes. In the game we take out working joes left and right as Amanda with a wrench, a bolt gun, etc. They don’t go down easily but they don’t require dismemberment. If concept art and background piles of joe corpses are anything to go by, then Samuels went through there with a fucking fire axe, and took some of them down by hand….

My guess is that whether it’s a programmed detail or not, Samuels has issues with exhibiting anger. And when put under too much pressure, he….can just snap/

Which brings us to my actual head canon:

Like any human who’s been treated less than great, like any human who’s been through a horrific event, _like any human at all_ , Samuels has the capacity to get horribly angry. Amanda doesn’t think he gets angry, that somehow he just copes with bullshit better than she does. It’s not until they’re arguing, about something that she did, something she put herself at risk tot do, that his voice raises, his expression shifts, and Amanda doesn’t cower. She _will not_ cower. Only once did she have a partner raise a hand against her, and not only did she block him but she broke his nose and was able to run out and call the cops. 

But anger on Samuels looks _inhuman._ She backs up towards the kitchen, towards the cutlery drawer, she knows how he ticks and she could probably take out enough cords with a large blade that she could—–

It’s not until then that she notices what she’s planning, and that he hasn’t made any more of an advance on her. The argument dies down without a winner, and both leave the other alone for several hours. 

Samuels is never violent with her, and makes a point of not resorting to violence, ever. 

For the most part, he’s relatively calm, and very difficult to anger to the point that he has to give it the outlet of physical or verbal expression. 

…But Amanda did start a fight once at a bar and he did have to incapacitate that one guy, and the other one, just to be safe. He didn’t inflict any lasting damage but it was more than enough to make a point. 

If I ever actually get far enough into Lucky Star that we’re at the point they’ve joined Zula and Davis’s crew, I’d LOVE to write a combat scene with him and either a Weyland-Yutani employee or an alien.

**16\. If they broke up, what would be their opinions of each other?**

**Amanda’s opinion:**

If they were to break up, despite her early fears, she wouldn’t be the one to call it quits. After fighting against every learned instinct that told her to tell Christopher to move on with his life, to isolate herself again, she wouldn’t let go over even the worst of fights. She’s willing to argue, to converse, to sleep on the couch if it goes on that far. That first year was spent trying to talk herself out of running away. Every year after would be spent trying to hold on. No, no, if someone was leaving now it wouldn’t be her.

But she couldn’t blame him, leaving because he’s found someone so suited to him that she finishes his sentences, someone who never cuts him off mid-thought, someone cultured and kind and soft in all the ways that Amanda herself isn’t. Or, if it wasn’t that he found someone else but _something_ else. The realization that with false records allowing him to live and work as a human that he could do anything he wants in the galaxy, so why would he want to stick around with this short-sighted greaser who refuses to give up her loyalty to the Lunar colony-city she was born to. Maybe he’d want to explore, sightsee; maybe he’d want to work on Terra like a normal man, and sure he can’t have children but he could meet a nice widow with kids of her own and be part of a real and whole family without having to worry about this woman next to him waking him up by screaming herself awake from nightmares. 

Everyone else in her life has left her and she only really blames a few of them for it; if Samuels were to leave her, she won’t think anything less of him as someone who is very good and kind at heart.

**Christopher’s opinion:**

There’s no doubt anywhere in his mind that if one of them were to bring an end to what they have it would be her. What would he ever have to gain from leaving? What out there in the wide universe could possibly outmatch Ripley’s clever mind, hero’s heart, and survivor’s spirit? She’s brave and tough, sweet and accepting of people’s problems and differences. Staying with her has given him a window into a life that he’d have never otherwise known he was missing out on. Even when she’s angry, when they do disagree, when her hot-headed stubbornness that he once found so attractive is turned on him instead of an authority–he’s never once wanted to leave, and she has yet to give up.

But it’s more likely than not that one day she’ll ask him to leave, or leave herself. Likely the previous; she loves this city-colony for all her complaints about it and she’s proud that she’s a second generation citizen of Luna, a true Lunar as quasi-science TV specials like to call them as they examine possible differences between them and Terra or colony-planet born humans. She could have any engineering job she wants, and he’s more than once casually mentioned director positions to various companies and renowned shops that he’s heard of. Any of the could tip her mental scales into making her prefer to leave.

And really what was keeping her here? She loves him, true. He believes that by now, doesn’t spend every second that they’re together trying to read her thoughts as to why she wants to be here with him when there are so many men and women out there that are much more like her. The two of them are not a good pair and never were; they’re very different in tastes and interests and personalities. Someday she’ll find love elsewhere and he won’t be able to do anything but try to be happy for her even though meditating on the thought too long of that drifter ex-boyfriend with the scuffed leather coat from her time in the US foster system, or the racer pilot girl she met on a college trip to Japan with her black-shadowed eyes…..

It makes him _angry_. Irrationally, unavoidably angry. Why would she want to hurt him? She would make an active choice to pursue another person instead of the one she assures _every single night_ that she’ll stay with until she dies or he chooses to leave.He’d follow her anywhere if she ever decided to leave Luna, or give her whatever space she asked for, _he’s given her everything that he’s physically able to give her and offered his life more than once_. 

Despite how much it worries him, if she were ever to leave he isn’t sure that he’d be able to forgive her; the pain would be too much, the distress to much, and just thinking about her coldly telling him she’s done, that some night with her sleeping peacefully in his arms, and sharing his pillow would be the last and he’d have no warning (illogical, you’d know, illogical that there wouldn’t be signs) it overheats his brain, and sets off warning lights. 

He would never be able to think of her in affectionate terms again.


	41. a fanfic?

Samuels picks up Amanda’s datapad. 

She was reading something.

She was reading something _romantic_. It was…a romance novel apparently, an…erotica… and before Samuels can force himself to look away he comes across the names of the characters and realizes that it’s not just a romance. It’s a fanfiction.

It’s a Star Trek fanfiction and he’s caught enough from her watching it to know that one of the characters involved is an android.

“Amanda, what _is_ this?”

“What’s wha—– _OHH NO PLEASE DON’T READ–”_

 _“_ Too late, but why…..? Do you have a type?”

It’s not that she _has_ a type. It’s just. She’s only really cared about four men, two of whom were human, one was a fictional android, and one was a very real android, so by that logic it doesn’t really count. Does it? Of course it doesn’t. It’s not like she had any particular reactions to her lover’s more mechanical details, not like she got excited from hearing his inner computers whir at a faster speed than normal, not like she ever, you know, _daydreamed_ , about the fictional android either not like–

….okay. So Amanda Ripley might have a few different types, but maybe describing one of those types as “inhumanly intelligent with endearingly inept social skills and a friendly and polite demeanor” had more to do with it than “android.”


	42. age difference

“What do you mean you don’t remember that?”

“I wasn’t around for it,” he replies simply. it’s a reminder really, he’s sure she knows–she’s read his technical manuals, she knows what makes him tick and how it works, of course she knows this too.

“But they only found the diamond mine on Ceres twelve years ago, it was all anyone was talking about for weeks,”

“My model didn’t get an official release date until almost six years after that,”

“So? At the labs you still would have had access to newscasts? Or even just gossip from the techs?”

“Amanda, luv, when that story was being broadcast, the iron ore used in my circuitry was still in the dirt on Mars. Design on my model didn’t even start for several years.” Truth be told, he remembers very little of his first year too, his sentience not yet to it’s full potential, more or less a cog at the office machine.

“…..By model you mean the body you’re currently in, don’t you?”

“This body is barely two years old,”

“I _know_ that. But you, the you in your head, your memory core and–don’t argue with me when I say it–your soul is much older?” She still isn’t so sure she believes in souls, but to think of him without one is to drop an anvil on her chest.

“No?”

“What do you mean?”

“I–and that is me as a concept, a collection of memories and traits that have been housed in the two different models–have only existed for six years.”

It takes Ripley almost a full minute for it to sink in.

“You’re…six years old.”

“Not exactly, because–”

“I mean I guess I knew that you weren’t as old as you look, you’re too advanced to actually be in your forties but–”

“ _How_ old do you think I look?” he isn’t vain, isn’t sure it’s a concept that he’ll ever fully develop, but _forties…?_

 _“_ And all this time you were twenty-fucking-years younger than me?”

“Do I really look that old? Do people see us and think that our age gap is that–”

“Christopher please, thirty eight is generous.”

“….I’d have said thirty five.”

“But you’re _six.”_

 _“_ I am mentally and emotionally and physically an adult, made to think and function and communicate as one so I don’t see the problem with–”

“But you don’t have the experience of an adult! I’ve been–we can’t just– _oh my god._ You’re just a _baby_. _”_

 _“_ Are you alright?” he’s very afraid that his human is showing signs of short circuiting, which is very distressful considering that she doesn’t have any circuits.

“I’m–” she’s sitting on their couch. It’s late. It was a late night and a late, lazy morning and she’s wearing the shirt that went with the pyjama pants he currently had on since she couldn’t find hers. _AND HE WAS SIX_. 

Yes?”

“I”’m getting a drink.”


	43. What kind of comic even IS that?

So I know I’ve used the gag of “Amanda Ripley finds something awful that has to do with robots at an antique market and brings it home to the displeasure of her housemate, which might be the main reason she got it” a _lot._ but trust me on this one I’m dying over it.

On a MUCH needed vacation to somewhere on-Terra, Amanda goes to an antique shop that specializes in old comics and other geekery and finds a few things she might get (some Star Trek fanzines from the 70′s that she shouldn’t spend that much on, but wow that one is near mint; a comic adaptation of a Heinlein novel, some Sandman, idk) but comes across a box of Adult Comics and finds this monstrosity:

(insert super NSFW image of a comic book, with a retro pinup style illustration of a topless human woman grinding against a very robot-looking android. It was a lot more explicit than I felt comfortable using inside a drabble-collection chapter)

Despite her initial cringe reaction and internal bitching about the lack of understanding of female body proportions, she really appreciates the style the android was drawn in; it shows an eerie resemblance to the internal structures of early synthetic models, even if the head looks like a bad cross between Robocop and Terminator. She’s still thinking this over when her phone buzzes, her own antsy, anxious android wondering where she went becuase they were supposed to meet back up at the hotel room an hour ago to change before heading for the (beach, lake, again, idk) and….the little demon on her shoulder shoves the angel off her other shoulder and she slips the comic into her existing stack of books, hoping the clerk notices _nothing_.

Samuels reaction is almost invisible; after all she’s brought home similar such nonsense before, even if it wasn’t so graphic. They have that Forbidden Planet poster in the main room still and he’s come to appreciate it as an in-joke between them when friends who don’t know about his nature (or rather lack of nature) when they come on a rare visit. 

“Ripley do you know a language other than English?”

“No, but I don’t need to read to see the pictures.”

“That android is from a generation that lacked–er, fully human anatomies. I’m only the second line to be….accurate.” he’s so flustered; as if he forgets she has intimate first hand knowledge of the realism he’s designed with.

“Okay but clearly this one didn’t; and clearly it’s older than that anyway, and _clearly_ it is _smut_ and not an actual historical or recent technical guide or anything.”

“…..Synthetics–I didn’t think that as a…. as an erotic preference the concept has existed for so long.”

“Robot kink? I mean, I guess it was a thing. I found a lot of explicit fanfiction for androids from movies when I was a teenager, and some of it was going back to mid-21st century.”

“I don’t want to think about that, or about that comic, and can you _please_ not say anything about the comic.”

Ripley pages through it with a closer eye than she did in the comic shop. At one point her eyebrows raise and Samuels starts wondering if he shouldn’t have just walked down to the beach himself and left her alone with it.

“Chris look at this one,” she turns the book around to show him a double-page set of three panels that display such an uncomfortable looking scenario that he thinks he’s impossibly blushing.

“Clearly not done from human models.”

“Okay but you might be able to do that–”

“ _p a r d o n ?”_ he manages to get out while Ripley flicks through a couple more pages. 

“So we could really start using this. Maybe they have similar ones there; I’ll head back later and–”

“Amanda.”

“Look at this one and tell me you don’t want to try it,” she holds up another page.

“I do not want to test the limitations of my joins or tendons, especially not on vacation, and _especially_ not when we’re hours away from the nearest synthetics lab should something happen.”

“Fair enough,” she goes through one more page, and simply stares. Samuels, lacking any kind of self preservation instinct walks over to see it.

“Amy, if you love me please don’t say anything else.”

“I can’t tell if that was a hard nope or a soft yes on this one, but I’ll have to pass becuase I’m not sure that _I_ can bend that way.”


	44. Mini Nonsense About Amanda's Type

“You were always saying that about me.”

“What?”

“That I’m not your type. And it’s…well, if I _knew_ your type, then–I can’t change my appearances drastically, but if it’s a certain style, or…mannerism that I lack then–”

“Chris, just because you aren’t my usual type doesn’t mean that I’m not attracted to you.” She’s assured him of this a thousand times, and has long since stopped joking about it when she realized how much it bothered him.

And he had to bring this up _now_. They were making dinner, and all she said when he asked her if she liked French cooking was _not my type,_ and it was in reference to food, not anything at all do to with him, and now he’s _doing this again._

“It’s only–what could I do to be your type?”

She started chopping a tomato a little more aggressively than needed.

“Seriously, it doesn’t matter, you’re you, that’s all that’s important and I like you, love you, and I want you.”

Almost absentmindedly, Christopher continued peeling garlic cloves. The scent of it didn’t stick in his hands the way it did in human skin, and it was quickly designated as one of his duties. 

“…Does the fact that I’m an indefinite duration have anything to do with that?”

Two months ago, Amanda would have choked to hear him say something so bluntly. Then again, two months ago he’d never even reference anything beyond the confines of their bedsheets. Now, she just lets it slide.

“No, I told you the first night here that we never had to do anything you didn’t want. I’d be just as happy with you if you wanted your own room.”

“Really?”

“Okay fine, I’d miss the company, but you’re always going to be more important to me than anything you can do.”

There’s a moment of silence again, this one longer, and she thinks that the conversation has finally died, but he looks up at her.

“Is it the accent?”

“What?”

“Most residents of Luna have a vaguely western American accent, or else north-eastern American. If you were used to dating men that sounded more like you, then I could–” he paused, and when he spoke again his voice was slightly lower, and perfectly accented to match her own “–switch vocal programming.”

“You’d have to switch a lot more than vocal programming.”

“Hair color?” he asked, in his original accent once more.

“Christopher.” Amanda put the knife down and rubbed her eyes. _How didn’t he figure this out by himself_? Then again, this was the same man who couldn’t figure out the trolley system into the city-proper, and just walked for days rather than ask her. _For being so smart he’s really fucking thick_. “You’d have to change a lot more than your hair,”

“I’ll do it,”

“I don’t need you to, and I don’t _want_ you to change for me, besides I don’t think you’d want to.”

“But I do want to….Whatever alteration would be required to make me the best possible partner to you, I’d like to–”

“ _Jesus Christ, you’re not my usual type becuase I usually like girls_.”

“……..what.” to say that he _said_ it wouldn’t be fair, it was something closer to squeaking or whispering.

“How the _hell_ didn’t you pick that one up?”

“When you were staring at that poster on 8th avenue, it wasn’t becuase you like the lingerie set the girl on it was wearing,”

“Nope, I was staring at the girl. But thank you for buying it for me.”

“And here I thought I was being perceptive,”

“Oh you were, just also being very, very straight. Are you?”

“What?”

“Clearly not perceptive. _Straight_. Only like girls.”

“Thus far, I’ve only admired you–”

“Bullshit, I could list at least three actresses you like.”

“Then fine, women. I think.”

“Well, at least I’m your type then,”

“I…Amanda, I don’t think you are.”

“What the fuck.”

“See? None of the characters on any of those actresses have portrayed are quite so…blunt. Or crass; certainly not as tough.”

“This isn’t funny,”

“But you’re still my favorite, still mean more to me than they do or hypothetically would. I don’t know how that works.”

“Welcome to being human.”

“It’s confusing. I don’t like it.”

Amanda merely laughs with increasing volume, before leaning over the counter to kiss his cheek.

“That doesn’t make me any less confused.”


	45. Cold Shower

Ripley didn’t vomit this time, not on this mission. The sound and smell of burning alien eggs would be in her head for days, but this was the fourth nest they’ve burned since the combined survivors of the _Torrens_ and the _Europa_ decided that someone needed to do something about WeYu’s monomaniacal hunt for the beasts.

The ship was quiet now, though the old thing rattled something awful on take off, and the shockwaves of the station they detonated the self destruct on didn’t help. 

Verlaine was a good pilot, too good for a contract ship; Amanda often wondered if there was a specific reason she never signed up to a commercial or military flight career. She could have flown for a living and making three times what she did as a contract pilot but–

“Ripley?”

“Zula, I didn’t even hear you walk up,” she had in _part_ been looking for the other woman. Olivia, Olivia’s girlfriend, and her… _sister_ (a beautiful, white-blonde synthetic, Viola that Amanda wasn’t yet ready to admit she saw as competition) had been running the digital front this time, while Ripley, Samuels, and Davis had boarded the derelict station. Couples or relatives were usually split for missions–it would be cruel to make one choose between a loved one or the fate of a mission should it come down to it–but Olivia still hadn’t fully recovered from the acid burns she got on the last mission. The recovery power of an ex-marine or not, she was only human.

“I was talking with Noemi,”

“How’s she holding up?”

“As well as you can imagine,” Zula looked her friend over; she seemed antsy. “Where were you going?” Ripley took half a second too long to answer. “Never mind. Check the showers, I know Davis said he takes them to regulate temperature when he’s stressed,”

“That’s where I figured he was, but I did want to ask you something too.”

“Yeah?”

“If this fucked with him too much, can I somehow bribe you to a), not tell him that I asked this, and b) keep him on-ship for a while? I’m worried he’ll just shut down completely during a mission.”

“You’re not worried about that,”

“What do you mean?” _he’s my partner, we’d be married if it was legal, I know how he thinks_.

“You’re worried he’s going to go Terminator again like he did on the recordings from Sevastapol,”

“That’s not–”

“Ripley the guy tore the heads off of androids. If I didn’t trust you the way I do he wouldn’t be on this ship.”

“He’s harmless.”

Zula didn’t try to argue with her.

“Two more nests, Rip. Then we all go home.”

“There’s more out there,”

“Not within a three sector parameter. Get some rest; we’ll all be discussing cryo options for the next leg of the trip tomorrow.”

“Yeah…you get some rest too.”

“Thanks,” Zula offered something that could have been a smile before continuing in the opposite direction of the corridor.

Ripley already had her hot shower, washing off what she could of what she saw. The one body in the wall of the nest was a young child, and she had almost blacked out. She’d never seen a kid at one of these wrecks before. And it was true she wanted to check on Christopher, to be sure that he was doing as okay as he could be doing. 

And it was also true that she knew he was going to take a shower and she was heading exactly there.

She kept a spare pair of shorts and a singlet in her locker outside the showers in case she ever forgot clothes, or needed to shower without having time to go and get any. 

Luckily too, that only one shower stall was running, and Amanda undressed, wrapping a towel around herself, and knocking on the sliding door.

“There are four other showers in this row alone, do you–”

“It’s me,”

“Amy?”

“Who were you expecting?”

“I’ll be out in a minute if you needed me,”

“Oh, I need you alright,” the line was awful and she regretted it immediately.

“Give me two minutes, luv.”

“Or….I could join you,”

“You don’t want to do that,”

“Don’t you want company?” she half pouted.

“Of course, and I’ll see you in our cabin later, I just–”

“Come on, nothing else, just let me in,”

“It’s not a good idea,”

“No one’s going to come in here, you know that don’t you?” she opened the shower door, dropped her towel, and shut the door behind her as she entered the stream of water all in one movement—

—and immediately proceeded to scream.

“ _WHA T THE FUCK?!”_

_“I told you—”_

_“CHRIS IT’S FUCKING FREEZING IN HERE–”  
_

_“_ That’s what I was trying to tell you–”

“ _JESUS, JUST FUCKIN MOVE SO I CAN GET out please?!”_

Amanda tumbled out of the shower stall, and immediately scrambled for her towel, shaking horribly, and almost nauseous from the shock.

“I didn’t know you were a masochist what the _fuck_ were you doing freezing your-”

“Considering the fact that my entire surface is silicone, none of it is going to _freeze.”_ He turned the water off and offered a hand to her to stand up. “Are you alright?”

“What–”

“Regulating my temperature. It wouldn’t come down, and cold water is an easy fix for it.”

“Next time…just say ‘hey, babe, maybe later because I like my water nearly frozen solid.’“

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she accepted his arm as support, and let him help her to her feet.

“Sorry, dear.”

“You’ll pay for it later,”

“Again, I told you not to,”

“You….will pay for it.”

“Whenever you say that, we miss the morning meeting.”

“We deserve it, Today was hell. I’m taking another shower, a hot shower, and then I’m going to meet you in the cabin, and I’m going to sleep for the next eleven hours.”

“I won’t stop you. Actually, I think I’ll join you in that eleven hours. A shut down sounds great right about now.” She caught a glimpse at the look on his face, and impulsively lifted the hand he held out to her, and kissed it. 

“We’re okay. Okay?” she said, uncharacteristically soft.

“….I know. When this is all over, we’re retiring to a desert island on an uncharted planet.”

“That’s a great idea.”


	46. We've met before...

When the two meet in game, it’s not the first time they’ve been introduced.

It’s the seventh.

She was given a company android to run maintenance on as part of her interview process with WY, and there’s something off about him. He’s friendly. He asks her what she’s doing and why, and how she ended up working for WY and you know what? He has just little enough of a perosnality that she lets it all out. Her mother, her shit father, her lack of funds, her hating herself for crawling back to the company that acted like it owned her when really it just owed her.

“They aren’t the best people to be property of,” he says with a half smile.

“Are there any good ones?”

“If you ever need anything, feel free to put it in as a request with me.”

“You would do that? Don’t they have like…teams of you?”

“Well–you don’t have to ask for me specifically, but–a lot of humans have favorite synthetics to work with, it helps ease the uncanny valley if they’re dealing with the same person, for lack of a better word, every time they’re in.”

“I might do that then,”

They meet once about her case, and he makes the mistake of telling his human superior that he’s upset by it.

That he’s feeling about it.

 _Feeling_.

The next time Amanda comes back, a bit more hopeful than she’s been for a while, he doesn’t even remember her, just a few details about her case. 

“It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”

Ripley doesn’t tell him what happened, or the next two times it happens.

After the third time it happens, three times she’s watched his eyes light up with something that could even be affection alongside human care, she suggests they discuss the case in a more casual setting. WY hears “public setting where she’s less likely to make a scene” and approves the request.

And her next four requests. Cafes, a couple diners, the restuarant over looking the tourist docks…..A bar where the music is so loud the next couple over can’t hear them.

“You seem so real,” he tells her, taking the cap off her beer with one hand, a trick show of strength that makes her grin.

“Because I am?” she clicks her bottle to his when he passes it to her.

“No…it’s like you’re in my coding–I’m sorry, it’s… Almost like you’re my operator or you wrote my programming. I don’t think I have a better metaphor for it. I feel like I know you, more than I actually do.”

“You get more human every time we meet.” she smiles.

“What does that mean?”

It’s that fourth time that they’ve met, the longest it’s lasted that she actually tells him, but not for any real reason other than the fact that it’s never gotten this far and whatever ‘it’ is isn’t something she wants to chance at not getting back.

On one hand he doesn’t want to believe her, on the other, well…he’s seen it happen to his peers, seen their vacant eyes and confused faces when he tries to remind them of their brief and lifeless small talk. He’s so much more lifelike than the others and he finally admits that to himself, and Ripley–Amanda–has put forth this effort so many times. She even has screen shots of emails that WY has long since hidden. Conversations that they’ve had, all terse and businesslike but speaking of a familiarity below the ‘with all due respect.’

Christopher Samuels leans over to her, pauses; if the proximity bothered her she had room to lean back, and he continues on and instead of talking at her ear so she could hear him over the guitar from the live band, he kisses her on the mouth, and when she doesn’t pull away from him, he puts his hand on the side of her face, and the other around her back, holding her close to him until she holds him back. They’re just another couple making out to the music.

Ten hours later, he kisses her on the hand before getting out of her bed, finds his clothes, and finds his way around her kitchenette enough to find something food-related. Humans eat first thing in the morning right? 

“That was….a lot.” Amanda says before anything else when she slumps across the room to collapse into a chair.

“At some point last night you said I should stay.”

“I know I did,” 

“I meant you said I should stay…for good. Because if they find out why I was away last night I’m facing much worse than a reformatting.”

“They’ll figure out where you are.”

“I can wander. Hide sometimes if needed.”

“Okay. Alright. You don’t have to stay with me, I know a few guys that could help with getting you IDs, and–”

“Thank you… For now though, I think you should have something to eat, I don’t remember you having anything last night.”

“You’re good.” she smiles, crosses the tiny apartment room to hug him tightly, “And you’re welcome to turn that into a two night stand if you want.”

“I might have to do that.”

It’s two weeks of wearing civilian clothing with Amanda Ripley, two weeks of seeing her in settings other than professional, seeing her relaxed, seeing her happy. Two weeks of nights spent testing the limits of his protocols, and stroking her hair as she falls asleep, her arms tight around him.

A jacket he bought for himself with money he might have stolen/withdrawn from a company account is now draped around her shoulders on a walk home, arms linked, when some idiots think he’s a synthetic and call her out on it.

“Does she look artificial to you boys?” he says, accent morphed into that of an actor from the old movie they just saw.

“I meant you, asshole.”

“Fuck off,” Amanda interjects before a fight gets started. It’s not the first time someone’s recognized him. Glasses, sun glasses, the leather jacket, skipping a few days of shaving, none of it has made him look different enough. He knows they’re going to get caught, and he knows she’ll be in trouble when they do.

If he turns himself in though, the humiliation that she’ll face knowing that some sick creeps at WY now know what every part of her body and heart look like? Not worth it. 

“Amanda?” he wakes her late that night,

“Yeah?”

“I’m going out for a walk. Feeling a little overheated.”

“mmm sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” he kisses her softly, then pulls her up to sitting next to him 

“What?”

“Just saying goodbye,” he kisses her tenderly, holds her close.

“Are you okay?”

“I am, I promise.” she doesn’t seem satisfied with his answer “If I ever forget again–if something ever happens… Please tell me again?”

“Of course.”

“No matter how much I do or don’t believe you, how many times it happens, keep reminding me?”

“You’re freaking me out, Chris…”

“Amanda?”

“Okay, fine, I promise.”

“Thank you. Because I don’t know if I can or not, but I do feel compelled to say I love you.”

“It’s okay, I don’t know if I love you or not either, but I feel ‘compelled’ to say it back to you.” she kisses him again, afraid she knows what he’s about to do.

“I’ll be right back,” 

“Wait,”

“Yes?”

“You’re getting more human. I don’t think you’ve lied to me yet.”

“I’m not–”

“I love you. Be careful.”

“I will.”

He does a base reformat to himself, and then goes back to the offices. 

Ripley doesn’t sleep for the week, and nearly has a heart attack when WY rings her to come back.

“Is the synthetic I usually work with back yet?”

“No.”

“I want to talk to that one.”

They show her a fake, she catches it after a few minutes, and tells the supervisor that there must be a mistake, and she’s then shown another one.

It’s him, she’s sure of it, but she’s not going to tell him either, not yet. Maybe not ever. Still, whatever is there shows up again and again, and finally she’s done. She’s ready to move on, to hope that he gets away some day, but maybe it’ll be easier since she’s the reason they always seem to catch him on the verge of self awareness, when he shows up to her work with a golden ticket. 


	47. Ripuels and Davis/Zula asks

Zula and Davis

  * **who believes in love at first sight?** Neither of them, if you ask them. If you were to remove their mind and dig for the truth against their will? Davis. Davis believes in it.


  * **who started liking the other first?** Davis; Zula didn’t even register him as something close enough to human to care about until after they faced their first alien infestation together, but she went from “I sort of trust this thing” to “I think I might really, really, care about him” almost overnight.


  * **who is more likely to suggest a romantic, candle-lit dinner?** Davis. Humans like that kind of thing, right?


  * **who’s behind the wheel more often during road trips?** Zula, becuase it’s her truck damnit. 


  * **who sets up the tent and who gathers firewood during a camping trip?** Zula sets up the tent becuase she’s a marine and she can handle a lot of shit but last time she went to get firewood she got a hand full of slugs on one of them and nope nope nope never again. Davis just finds dead tree limbs for firewood and rips them off the tree. 


  * **who hooks bait during a fishing trip? who catches more fish?** Neither of them are squeamish about hooking bait; Zula catches the most fish, and Davis has no idea how/why.


  * **who insists on learning how to ballroom dance?** It’s not that they wanted to, but _somebody_ they knew had a wedding party and they felt guilty for saying they’d go, but not dance. They’re actually very good dancers though after a little practice.


  * **who goes all out on the other’s birthday?** Zula but only becuase no one ever did it for her. 


  * **who sings louder while cooking? while showering?** Davis sings while showering, badly. Zula hums while cooking, becuase when her grandmother cooked for her they would sing together.


  * **who teases the other for said singing?** Zula tells Davis he sounds like an antique dial up.


  * **who insists on checking their zodiac sign compatibility every so often?** Zula, but it’s ironic. Definitely ironic. Absolutely. Maybe not.


  * **who drags the other to fortune tellers at fairs?** Davis becuase they usually piss off Zula. 


  * **who would carry who over the doorstep of a new home?** Zula _could_ but she _shouldn’t_ becuase the laser therapy on her spine and the surgeries have repaired a lot but there’s no reason for her to risk it. Davis didn’t get the reference when Chris suggested he carry her inside so he just…picked her up at the waist, lifted her over the step and put her back down.


  * **who believes in love at first sight?** Christopher believes in absolute infatuation at first sight, the kind so strong that it could be love if it’s given enough attention. Amanda says “bullshit.” It makes him smile.
  * **who started liking the other first?** Chrisssss didn’t stand a chaaaance. He was handed her file full of incident notes and warning signs and “DO NOT CONTACT” memos and IMMEDIATELY thought to himself that this girl was _fascinating_ and charming. His human coworker thought he was mental.
  * **who is more likely to suggest a romantic, candle-lit dinner?** Eventually it’s Amanda, because she knows that he likes that kind of thing, even though it’s not really hers (there’s a chapter in LS for that soon-ish, but it’s angsty and miserable and I’m sorry ahead of time).
  * **who’s behind the wheel more often during road trips?** Amanda becuase last time Samuels was driving they passed a sign advertising the last stop for recharging before the mountains an Amanda said “Want to top off? Becuase your batteries are going to be dead by morning,”   
“Why? My main power is at 97%, with average exertion I have a week,” bless his heart, so she told him _exactly_ what was going to drain his power reserves and he almost crashed into the car ahead of them.
  * **who sets up the tent and who gathers firewood during a camping trip?** Amanda is NEVER allowed to start a fire ever. She’s started too many by accident that her partner doesn’t want to see what an on-purpose fire looks like. She’ll set up the tent, but her idea of a tent is a tarp, with a sleeping mat, and then another tarp on top. Christopher _fucking walks_ back to the nearest town and buys a “real” tent that actually zips shut and puts it together. 
  * **who hooks bait during a fishing trip? who catches more fish?** Amanda was never bothered at the idea of hooking bait, but anymore the concept of killing something so easily and guiltlessly makes her feel sick and dizzy; Chris tried to fish but his programming wouldn’t let him kill the fish, and this whole portion of the trip is quickly over with and not mentioned again.
  * **who insists on learning how to ballroom dance?** I’m never ever ever ever going to get over that one story by [@probablynotasquirrel](https://tmblr.co/mtFCHl-fCojCZ-a_cLxSIEA) so I have to say Chris I’m sorry.
  * **who goes all out on the other’s birthday?** Amanda, Christopher would but he had explicit instructions on threat of death to _not_ go overboard for her. When he sees Amanda’s small pile of gifts for him, a cake (really he doesn’t even like eating enough to warrant a– _oh raspberry filling),_ and plans for a day out, he’s very distraught that he just took her to dinner and a movie for her 27th. 
  * **who sings louder while cooking? while showering?** Amanda for both, Samuels tried to sing once, and the sound was _not_ good; his vocal simulator isn’t programmed to allow for singing. He can hum (…or moan) in monotone but that’s about it.
  * **who teases the other for said singing?** Chris teases her, he thinks it’s incredibly charming, but her song selections are usually ridiculous.
  * **who insists on checking their zodiac sign compatibility every so often?** Christopher. It’s nonsense, it’s stupid, it’s—well this one says Amanda and I are the worst possible pair so all this astrology rubbish is a gimmick and I don’t like it.
  * **who drags the other to fortune tellers at fairs?** Christopher, he kind of has a need for constant validation that they’re a couple, and that even the fortune tellers, who are VERY perceptive at human reactions/personalities, tell them that they’ll last as a couple. One of them did tell them that they’d have two girls and a boy, and Amanda choked from trying not to laugh.
  * **who would carry who over the doorstep of a new home?** Amanda jokingly asked him to do it, but he said it was a bad idea. People could notice. They live close enough to the WeYu campus that people in their building could and probably would recognize him for what he is. It’s a pleasant shock then once the elevator opens on their floor when he scoops her up and carries her to their door.




	48. A PLANET?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full credit to sunnyhomes for this post:
> 
> Taylor: Ripley won’t come out of her room, what do I do?
> 
> Samuels: tell her I said something.
> 
> Taylor: said what?
> 
> Samuels: anything.
> 
> Amanda barging in moments later: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN THE SUN IS A PLANET?

Samuels could have said that he learned to lie in a drastic life or death situation, saving someone’s life, or at least his own life. Something intense and full of drama, a yarn to impress even the intimidating Amanda Ripley.

But unfortunately, Samuels had only recently learned to lie, and wasn’t very good at making things up.

“….The sun. It’s a planet.”

Taylor gapes at him, mirroring Amanda’s dumbfounded face exactly.

“What the _fuck_?” Amanda’s voice cracked as she asked, in a higher pitch than Samuels thought her voice could reach. He wondered what her vocal range sounded like as–

“The sun…is a planet.”

“Samuels, that’s not—” Taylor looked between the two, Amanda who looked like her new favorite crew mate just stabbed her (or else she was about to do so to him) and her coworker, one of the line she’s used to working with who she had never known to say anything but textbook dialogue.

“Of course it is, Miss Taylor.”

“It’s a fucking star,” Ripley said, breathless this time, as if his words of faux idiocy had caused her lungs to stop working.

“Is it?”

Taylor nodded, Ripley didn’t seem to have the energy to do the same.

“Well, Ripley, then I suggest you cease making yourself so scarce, that way you can continue to enlighten me with new information such as that.”

A muscle twitched in the corner of her eye as he turned to walk away.


	49. like an old married couple

The north side of the city had it’s ups and downs, and Samuels liked it in limited doses. Amanda barely tolerated it. She was duly proud of a lunar heritage, a second generation, born of fate or fluke of bad luck on the same rock her mother was, born into the generation that would fight for declaration of rights to Lunar citizens and their spouses, Amanda signed a couple petitions and turned out on election days when she remembered. There was just a fleeting moment of an echo of a victory when she heard the laws pass, how she imagined a casual sports fan must feel on hearing their home team’s first win in a long time, but it was gone when she heard someone call her name across the crowded cafeteria, and the dull roar of the dockhands all rushing into lunch hour over powered that of the TV. 

Mostly, the fact she’s a lunar only occurs to her when she starts her internal, bitching monologue at how much she absolutely fucking hates Luna City. Smaller than New York, twice as shiny, and every inch more valuable than her life three times over, and all the music and film and art producers; it was noisy with tourists and the general unquiet ambience that Luna always had that unnerved from it’s great distance to Terra composes and artists for thousands of years. 

She’s been spending too much time indulging Samules’ interest in art and film, and she rubs her eyes at the harsh daylight after leaving the latest art gallery, old concept art from movies about Luna going back two hundred years complete with film cells from that one by the French guy who’s name she kept mispronouncing. 

“Everyone out here has charged us for admission for two,”

“Because there’s two of us, and this place is turning into the The Kingdom Park all over again,”

“Have you been?” he asks, vacantly, only recently letting himself look ahead beyond the following morning. 

“If you’re asking if I want to go, hell no. But yeah. I repaired the antique space themed coaster, a team I was on got contracted right after Weyland-Yutani bought the franchise. Have you been there?”

“No.” If he was going to ask something else, or question her opinion on some obscure creation they’d just seen inside, he changed his mind, and hurried slightly to walk in line with her. They fell into pace naturally once he caught up; he of slightly more than average height, and her on the tall side, their gaits were similar. “So…it’s getting late,”

“Tired?”

“I don’t–I’m not–”

“I get it, okay? You aren’t physically tired, you don’t think they should have charged us for two tickets, and you probably aren’t hungry right now, but you know what? Maybe you’re mentally tired, and just want to relax now, maybe it’s better to shell out a little more an get to see how it feels to be treated like a human once in a while, and I don’t think you’ve ever tasted real ice cream.”

The crowds were thick, but no one acknowledged them, or the subject of Amanda’s short rant. Moments of silence passed before Samuels very subtly offered her his arm, and Amanda linked hers through it instantly. There had been very few times in her life that she had wanted to hold someone’s hand in public, but if he was going to offer, she’d take it. She walked a little closer to him too.

“I only mentioned it was getting late in case you wanted to get something to eat for yourself,”

“Treating a girl to a day out and dinner? And expecting nothing in return?” she was teasing, but as close to him as she was she could feel him get a little warmer. “Don’t worry,” she smiles, admittedly a little tired, admittedly more interested in a hot shower alone and curling up in bed with him in the warmest pajamas she owned, “You can have whatever you want later,”

“I–thank you? Where do you want to get dinner?”

“Cafe next block up might have less screaming children than the pizza place,”

“Sounds like a logical option,” 

Amanda’s noes crinkled, and she bit back her ‘ _okay, Spock_ ,’ comment. They’ve had a lot of small and sweet moments today, and it’s starting to make her feel uncomfortable.  
  
  
  
Inside the cafe is full, but not crowded, and Amanda crosses quickly to a row of tables along the back windows, far away from the noise from the street. She doesn’t bother with a menu, all these places have the same junk, and she mostly just wanted a coffee anyway, but Samuels already has a menu out and opened, even though she’s never seen him consume anything closer to food than a black coffee.  
  
“All the….items are named after lunar flights.”

“Welcome to tourist hell. Why do you think I live south of the city?”

“Tranquility and it’s surrounding districts are more…utilitarian.”

“Ugly as hell but affordable.”

“And a dozen of my face walking around,”

“Among other synthetics.”

“Do you know what you’re getting?”

“I was just going to get a coffee here and order take away on the way home,”

“Order whatever you’d like,”

She didn’t know many live-in couples, but the few she did all complained of the same thing: running out of things to talk about, and now, even after spending so much time seeing and doing things, she couldn’t think of five words to string together to make any kind of conversation. _He’s too good for me,_ a part of her said, _An actual human would be more companionable_ , another crueler part of her mind insisted. She shook her head a little in hopes to shut up both sides, only hearing the ending of a conversation that didn’t involve her.  
  
“Amanda?”

“What, sorry?” for not being an ‘actual human’ his expression was all bemused admiration as she forced her train of thought back into the present, and the young waitress (a hideous uniform in general theme of ‘retro space’ that half this part of the city had: red mini skirt, blue blouse, white boots, and eyeliner that the 1970′s wanted back) looking a little entertained by him.

“The waitress asked what you wanted,”

“Take your time,” the waitress said, “Your husband was saying you guys just went to gallery row, if you’re staying much longer I was going to suggest the museum of science fiction.”

“I’m a local,” Amanda said, correcting her. Samuels looked like someone had walked up behind her and put a gun to the back of her head, and she almost turned around to see what was going on. “He’s the one that’s new here,”

“Well, welcome to Luna,” the girl smiled brightly as he came back online,

“Thank you, I’ve…had a very good time here so far.” 

“And keep giving him ideas,” Amanda smiled, “He’s not my husband. Not yet.”

“Oh, I’m sorry! What can I get for you guys?”

“Coffees, two, black, and we’ll split a strawberry cake slice?”  
  
  
Samuels is still staring at Amanda, partially confused and paritlaly shocked, looking rather frightened, long after the waitress had come and gone with their food and more pleasantries.

“Chris, take it easy you look like you were handed a divorce statement, not a mistaken for married,”

“You weren’t upset,”

“No?”

“Would you want to be married?”

“We’ve been dating for a month,”

“We’re dating?”

“I don’t know what concerns me more, the fact that you didn’t realize we were dating, or the fact that you were asking if I wanted to marry you _when you didn’t think we were dating.”_

 _“_ I know–I know we’re together, but I thought dating implied…I don’t know. We live together. I don’t know what that makes us.”

“Sinners?”

“You always struck me as more modern than that,”

“Very true, I’m just trying to see what will make you crack a smile. You look like you’re stressed.”

“I am. But–I mean it, what _does_ that make us?”

“Dating, I guess. A couple, internally I keep thinking of you as my boyfriend but that doesn’t sound dignified enough for you. Man-friend makes me sound like an old woman trying to hide from her grandchildren that she’s dating again.”

“So….you would be my girlfriend?”

“If you’d like,” she sipped at her coffee, hoping to just finish it and go home, not sure if she wanted to sit him down and lecture him on general norms of dating again, or kiss him until that stupid look was finally off his face.

“But would you want to be married?”

“Jesus, I don’t know! I like you a lot, more than–I’ve really cared about anyone in a long time. But again, I haven’t known you that long.”

“Out of pure curiosity, how long would…you have to be in a relationship, in any good relationship, before you would want to get married?”

“I don’t know if I want to get married? To anyone–not just to–Chris, this isn’t–I don’t know how long. I don’t know how I could ahead of time. You’re…you’re more and more human every day and yeah, I already feel like this is work, but I haven’t been in a relationship in a long time so maybe that’s just how these are, but married?”

“I would like it…I think. It’s–a closeness I’d like to have with y–…with someone. I have no expectations on a time line but I don’t know about… Well, any of it. Anything.”

“To be honest, neither do I…But we can learn,”

“I like that idea,”

“Good. So do I,”


	50. things you said when you thought i was asleep

Amanda was used to hearing him mumble things, his volume low and sometime low-quality too, brushing hair away from her noes and mouth. He’d know if she was asleep or awake, could probably tell from her heart and breath, but these moments she figured she must have been waking slowly and still technically asleep, even if she could hear him.

_“Only me,” “Still early, love,” “I’m only going to start breakfast,”  
_

words like that followed by a soft kiss and such a slight movement of the bed that she’s still not sure how he does it without, no matter how many times she’s seen it.

And she’s aware that he’s alright, but the fact that her lover doesn’t exist when he’s not fully charged and aware, that whatever fluke of programming that gave him human-level sentience and will was just a misplaced one or zero away from rendering him as personable as their coffee maker. If souls exist for her, then she faces the real possibility of eternity without him, reincarnation without him. Lifetimes and memories and millennia pass and he’ll be a dream she eventually forgets.

Right now, a finicky new battery and a badly timed bug in a downloaded update have turned him into a beautiful plastic corpse. Silicone, to be more exact, or something like it. Chemical engineering wasn’t something she stayed up to date on. He’s lying on their couch; still, closing in on a decade together and a forged marriage license, he’s strange about handling technical maintenance on their bed.

She runs the back of her hand lightly down his arm, trying to ignore the mess of a towel under a milky slit in his side, half self-sealed already so it’ll need reopened once the new battery is charged and ready. Then hopefully, if his muscles hold out an extra year, they won’t be doing anything so invasive for another three or four years. 

“I don’t know if I’d recognize human skin,” she mumbles. Close to him for so long, and without the regular contact of humans for even longer, she really does wonder. Technology gets better every day, and surely a new synthetic model would be more realistic to human touch, but would she think so? So long in awe that he’s so close to real would she recoil at anything more real. 

They can and have managed to sleep apart, it got easier after the first few years, and sometimes if he didn’t feel like sleeping he’d kiss her goodnight on an evening before she had to be up early, and then work through the night. When he needed to charge in the beginning, he’d ask her to leave him alone; eventually he’d let her near him, and she’d stubbornly sleep sitting up next to him on the couch, then after that bridge was crossed, she’d often go to bed, her opinion on this matter well known, but also not a good enough reason to wake up with a messed up neck and back from sleeping weird.

She touches his hand, but there’s no response, no warmth, and certainly no life, that undeniable realness of him when he’s awake, or even in the faux-sleep he rests with every night. The battery cell needs a few more hours, but the vague orange-yellow the light on the dock has turned looks better than the red it was when this started, and she grits her teeth, yanking it from the base and setting to work. He can suffer the annoyance of the physical uplink cord to top the battery off during any free time for a few days. She’s done seeing him like this and he’ll have to either understand, or not ask at all.

There’s a practiced grimace on his face as he checks his power level but it has more to do with the towel under him, caked in hydraulic fluid., Amanda in the kitchen washing it from her hands and tools.

“You’re awake,” she says, friendly, almost sing-song. Her bedside manner less desperate than it was before they were together, when she would struggle to maintain any kind of calmness. No, even though he knows her stress level is still the same, still can (if he adjusts his audio sensitivity) hear her racing heart. 

“Barely…” he knows she wouldn’t have installed a faulty battery, knows that only nine hours have passed, knows that she purposefully put in a barely-charged battery just because she couldn’t tolerate the wait any more. 

He doesn’t ask. 

“How do you feel?”

“I’m…low, but lucid. How long was I charging after you put the battery in?”

“I only put it in just now,” she dries her hands on her jeans, and he doesn’t bother to remind her that there are two perfectly good tea towels hanging right next to her. “Why ask?”

“Becuase….Amy, I only heard a little, but…if you miss, or if you forget, what human touch feels like, I’ve told you before that you’re free to seek it out.”

“Fuck that, I’ve told you before, you’re all I want. And I wouldn’t be as generous with you if you decided you wanted to know what synthetic skin felt like. I mean…if it comes to it, and you want to leave for good, but as far as hooking up just our of curiosity? I’d really rather you didn’t.”

“Sorry, I thought you were talking to me wh–”

“Christopher.”

“What?”

“You didn’t have your batteries in when I said that. That’s all I said, I might have swore at some point when closing you up, but I didn’t–I wasn’t talking to you after you were back online.”

“You did say something about testing the power limits later, but you always use that line after I get repairs. No, you specifically said something earlier about…human touch.”

“Not while you were on,”

“That’s impossible.”

“well I didn’t saying anything else, maybe you dreamed it?”

“Without a battery?”

“Chris, I don’t know it’s…”

“It’s impossible. I must have imagined it.”

Amanda smiles a little, not satisfied with the explanation, but trying to file away the fear in the same back corner of her mind as many others.


	51. things you said when I was crying

She had seen the film before, many times in fact, since that first time her father let her watch it with him, skipping scenes that showed too much skin or too much blood, her barely-four-year-old self entranced by neon and the starry galaxy born of man-made lights reflecting in rain drops.

One of her first dates with her first serious boyfriend was to a pirate drive-in theatre in the middle of the desert, where she could blame her running eyes on sand. She understood that this nineteen year old was just looking to take advantage of her sixteen year old self, she _didn’t_ understand what he was doing when she turned seventeen and he suggested she run away, move in with him.

It was easier to understand when someone wanted to use her than it was to understand when someone actually was serious about her.

_“…..like tears in rain,”_

She had seen it on grainy TV sets on shithole stations, on small handheld screens from glossy designer datapads, on massive flat screens and rooftop bar-theaters.

Never thought she’d be seeing it on her own TV in an apartment that she owned.

“This bloody thing again?”

“You want a divorce?”

Samuels’s brow furrows in vague confusion, considering the fact that though they’ve taken to wearing rings, they aren’t technically married, and she doesn’t often refer to their relationship as a marriage. Beyond that he’s still not, and probably never will be, comfortable with even rhetorical and hyperbolic references to their separation.

“It’s not that–Amanda you probably shouldn’t be over-exposing yourself to something that’s going to upset–” he stops himself, he’s not her therapist, in fact he’s almost certain that he’s lying to her when she claims that she’s finally started seeing one.

“You’re jealous whenever I love anything else,”

He ignores her statement. Maybe he does have an immediate defensive reaction whenever she professes strong positive affection for something that isn’t him, but he never thought it showed.

“It’s _upsetting_ you,”

A white dove rustles off into the sky.

“Supposedly, it’s a signal that the Replicants had souls.”

“I doubt that…Amanda, you’re still crying.”

She sniffles a bit, shakes her head and pinches her noes for a second.

“I’m not. And I wasn’t crying. It’s only…”

“Only what?”

“You told me last summer, that it doesn’t matter if this is it. If there’s nothing after. If I die and there’s nothing, or if there is and you’re not there, then it doesn’t matter becuase we have so long,”

“And we do,” he tried to offer a reassuring smile, adjusting it slightly to more mimic the one that he has, so far, a solid eleven out of seventeen times resulted in exceptionally enjoyable situations.

“Do we? That feels like…last week. And it’s been months. We went to hell and back and you _died_ and that was almost a year but I feel like…We’ve just been floating in a dream.” Her eyes were welling up again, and the impulse to use every scrap of energy she had left to stop crying was still there, but Samuels has seen her cry a thousand times.

He holds back from comforting her, but he does wireless turn down the TV volume.

“We have…years ahead of us,”

“And how fast will they go? Like this one? Am I going to just wake up one morning, half alive and forget who you are?” it’s codependent and sure as hell isn’t healthy, but she’s not sure how to function without him.

“There’s nothing to worry about, not now. Not here, we’re safe,”

“And I’m getting older every second and you’re not going to change,” he sits down next to her, she’s so scared, and panicked and he pulls her close to his side, arm around her, and when she huddles next to him…Amanda’s tall and strong and powerful, but here she feels and looks and sounds so small.

“Amy, love, then don’t think about it.”

“Do you ever feel like you have a ghost?”

“I don’t,” he says, with a vague smile.

“What if it’s reincarnation, and…sometimes people get lost, and then there,” she takes a hand in both of hers, “You’re you, with feelings and distant memories of past lives, and…”

“It’s not true,”

“It’s not impossible either.”

“Amy, Amy…” he entertains it in abstract, a newer talent in his mind, and realizes that she needs this right now. He kisses the top of her head, and takes a breath, a scent, of what little he can smell, of her hair. “I think…We’ve met before. And that I have hoped, and wished,” he said, this wouldn’t be much of a stretch, “And _tried_ and failed over and over to get close to you, held back by tragedy or a mistake of my own–”

“–or my mistakes–”

“And I finally, for this hundredth time, have finally been able to be near to you like this.”

“I think it’s happened before. I think we’ve been together before. It would explain a lot.” 

He really wants to ignore her spiraling words, drag her out of the pattern, but he’s addicted to the increasing melodrama of her romantic declarations; words he’d never thought he’d ever hear her say, and all directed at him with the same fragility he’d get in his voice when talking to her.

“When have we ever found each other before?”

“A dozen times. We’ve met more than that, probably, but there have to be more lifetimes playing out in a loop of time somewhere, us, the same story, over and over with differing details,” he gives up, they’re both morose now, and if she’s trying to wring some hope from a hopeless place, well, he can’t lie to her, tell he they’ll be side by side for eternity or some such nonsense, but he can play a little.

“On other planets, neither of us human. Once you were the most vivacious winged creature, and I’d watch, a creeping vine. You stood so still next to me one morning, that I was able with the smallest tendril to reach out and touch you, even though you weren’t the star I was supposed to be growing towards.”

“Do you really remember that?”

“No, but I’m sure it’s happened.” he smiles, it’s a little forced, but he’s proud of himself or this strange and sudden burst of creativity, and she’s still sniffling but she’s stopped crying. He holds onto her tighter, and wonders if she’s right, and how many times he’s held on to her like she’s the only thing between him and oblivion, only to fall away again and again, and how long until they’re parted this time around.


	52. “You’re not in bed. I came looking for you.”

“Why?”

 _Becuase I was afraid you did something drastic_. He doesn’t say it, but looking at her leaning out over the safety bar on the roof of the apartment building doesn’t make him feel any better.

Christopher approaches her like her delicately. She’s relaxed, calm, he might even call her look serene, but he knows better, knows she has something eating her from the inside, something in her head that makes her lash out in anger, hide in closets with a gun that he’s since taken the ammo out of, taken the box of ammo out of her desk drawer too. He waits until Amanda looks at him to reach out to touch her, afraid to startle her into doing something stupid. 

“Because you’re normally in bed by now. Becuase I was going to try and rewrite the last week’s of auto-coding into something workable, and might as well be unconscious next to you.”

“Because you’re worried about me,” Ripley says dryly, neither accusing nor appreciative.

“That too,” he puts an arm around her, affectionate but protective, and some not-so-small bit hopes that if she were to do as he feared now, it would trip him and he’d lose all awareness at the bottom. The fight’s not worth it, not without–logically, not just her. Not only one person. But _a_ person. Someone. Something to care for and feel for. A lifeless job that he feels either a villain or a sentient copying machine at? No, but to weed through whatever horrible mismatch of emergency programming that was giving him horrible intrusive visions of worst-case scenarios….To have a friend around, that made things worth it. 

He had never thought before that he’d be so lucky to have a friend and lover in the most fantastic human he’d ever met, even if that human is now shivering at his side, and he thinks, about to cry again.

“No, no, none of that now,” he says holding her a little closer, gently guiding her a little farther from the edge and anchoring himself in place at the same time.

“I needed to feel something. Cold. I hate…I hate open space, I can’t—I thought if I could make myself look out at the open space it would…I don’t know what I thought,” 

There’s nothing much he can do other than listen, and he does; she’s told him before that open spaces scare her more than closed ones, always have but after free-floating with that monster nearby as the station burned in the atmosphere below (above? beside?) her with so many dead…… It’s hard for him to comfort her when he finds all her fears logical. 

“Come back inside and warm up,” he tells her, finding himself able to highly suggest and even persuade when he can’t order if it’s for her own good.

“I don’t think I can,” though her too-quiet is muffled by the distant, dull roar of the city, and the occasional car below or mechanical clank-crash of the industrial docks, he hears her in perfect clarity even if he doesn’t understand.

“I could limit my coolant?” _You might as well have just said you’re desperate, please come with me._

“It’s not…it _is_ a temperature thing. I feel…physically cold all the damn time, like there’s this massive frozen hole in my chest.”

“Can I do anything about it?” he needs her near him to relax, to do anything and this has been a rough evening for some reason for both of them.

“I doubt it, I really do,”

“Could I try to, at least?” he asks her, gently lifting her chin, and his answer comes as a forced smile. She raises up on her toes, kisses the corner of his mouth so quickly he can’t even be sure it was her intended mark, and she stands back down.

“You know what? That sounds better than standing out here freezing my ass off. Come on,” she links her arm through his and leads him to the doorway back down inside as if she was the one who had come out to find him. She sniffles hard, and he holds open the door for her, the most affection he can really show in front of security cameras in the building.

But he’ll stay the whole night with her, they both need it, and the morning would be a little kinder for it based on the company alone.


	53. things you said under the stars and in the grass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> general TW warning becuase this deals a lot with some ugly mental trauma effects.

“We don’t have to go home,” Ripley says, angry at herself for using the word ‘home’ instead of Luna and implying her preference of locale. Angry, too, that she grew roots, angry that she was satisfied when she only ever had been a drifter, leaving the second that things felt safe and warm, preferring the honesty of the cold detachment to past jobs, neighbors, and various places. 

“You’re very strange, you know.” It’s a kind way to phrase ‘absolute headcase’ and she knows well that he wouldn’t ever call her that, or think it, but she knows too that it’s true. A plethora of complexes and traumas and fears that make her once short fuse a non-existent one. 

Anymore she’s a pile of gunpowder in a world of small fires, and just two days ago she dropped the (plastic) sugar jar over coffee and began screaming, shaking in anger and rage that felt like it materialized out of thin air, so much awfulness coming out that she didn’t think she could stop, knowing it was absurd, knowing she was having a temper-tantrum like a child, but if she stopped screaming a string of profanities aimed at the jar, at herself, at the whole fucking satellite, she thought for sure she’d implode, guts boiling over. 

They had already chosen the dates for a camping trip, a first trip to Terra (dumb as hell, she knew that too, to take him to the middle of fucking nowhere instead of some city, some cultural center where he could see humanity and maybe learn something, feel something. Maybe she was afraid his intelligence and curiosity would take away his focus from her, unlike here where he’d be forced even closer to her, and sure she’s the first to deny that he’s a PA program, but really what was she using him for? 

Ripley loved this wonderful person, yes, but there was always that nasty cloud in the back of her head that reminded her she loved the way Chris treated her, and loved the attention and dedication, and maybe that was why this person so far removed from anything she’d ever wanted before appealed to her so much.

“Why do you say that?” she says, the racing thoughts making her words faster to make up for the time between what he said and when she answered, anxious that it was too long, knowing logically it was just a moment.

“Becuase you’re still under a great deal of mental duress, and you choose to sleep in a tent that provides only minimal shelter, and spend your time with me, still, after over a year of being back in human company. Becuase you’re offering a computer with legs the choice of where you spend your future.” 

She considers his words, spoken with an admiration close to hero-worship, a distant form of love she has to keep pulling him back from, she’s only a human, and a very poor one at that. This hatred of nothing, maybe of herself, definitely of herself, possibly of other things, but this raging blind hatred that forms a drastic black cloud over so many slight inconveniences, that turned her world into stark extremes (he’s late, clearly he’s not coming home, go fuck yourself, it’s your fault, you should just–), perhaps she’s always had it.

You have to have something foul in your shriveled heart to have murdered again and again without immediate feeling (but I didn’t, I hurt so horribly with fear and grief each time I thought I would fall over), without remorse (every day, every _fucking day_ , I feel it). 

A machine programmed to be dedicated to its owner is the only thing that ever stayed around you. 

The last thing that she wants is to be touched right now, but oblivious to what she’s containing in her head, aware that whatever is going on in his mind is likely of an unpleasant nature too, she doesn’t fight off when he reaches out and takes her hand in his, a little tighter than what would be considered comfortable. 

“Hard to think of it, isn’t it?” he breaks her silence again, and she doesn’t _care,_ doesn’t give a fuck what he’s doing with this bullshit small talk, can’t they–

“What?”

“Luna. The moon. Seen from down here as humans only ever saw it, and to think there’s a city there now, sprawling, an expansive training base….our home. All contained in that silver glow.”

“Pearl.”

“Pardon?”

“Every fucking poet and shit alway wanted to call the moon silver, and it’s not, it’s fucking pearl, it’s one lonely sad little orb on the horizon and–”

“Amanda?” He sits up onto his elbows, and Amanda forces her eyes shut against the burn of angry tears.

“Fuck. Sorry. It’s not silver.”

“No,” he says softly, lying back down, “I suppose it isn’t.”

“If you like it better here, we don’t have to go back.” She says it out of duty, out of consideration, because this kind and patient man deserves the world and he’s trapped himself with her, and they’re out here looking at stars like they’re young and ignorant that there are monsters out there, and every moving speck of light could be carrying them like a fucking plague ship full of ghosts, corpses, and demons. Later he’ll surprise her with something else, like the wine he had brought last night, or the popcorn he taught himself to make over a fire their first night, and then he’ll climb into the two sleeping bags they had zipped together, hold her like she’s something _special_ and–

“Would you like to go home?” he asks her, ignoring her previous question.

“Why the hell would we cut this trip short?”

“You haven’t been….You aren’t yourself this week, maybe resting in your own bed could be better for you?”

Whatever God that could be that could ever give a shit about her worthless soul still help her, she almost told Samuels to fuck himself.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not,”

“I feel like this all the time, it’s always there, even if it’s not loud it’s just… _fucking there_ like some annoying white noise and yes, I’m myself right now, becuase this is what I am. A fucked up asshole.”

“I’m not going to debate with you on that, or argue about how you feel. I’ll never know, I never could know. I haven’t seen what you have or done what you’ve _had to do without choice_ , or lived the life you have, but I’ve seen you smile and laugh, and I’ve seen you light up with joy like stars,” she’s still looking at the sky, afraid to look at him, so angry and so scared at once that it feels like something is eating at her heart and for a terrified second she puts her hand over her chest to feel if something’s about to claw out of it.

She glimpses to the side; he’s still focused on the sky too.

“Amy,” he inches closer to her, and it makes her feel like a cornered animal.

“What?”

“If I told you that you were coming down with the flu, would you allow me to take care of you, assist you in caring for yourself, or take you for professional human medical attention?”

“Not this analogy again,”

“You’re broken, that doesn’t mean you can’t be helped, or mended entirely.”

The bubble of anger is about to burst, and she came close to hitting him once in the past, lashing out becuase he was unlucky enough to be there and ask her to stop screaming.

“I don’t want to talk about it, I really don’t,” she was suddenly all too hot, and sat up enough to take off her sweater, dressed down to her sports bra and shorts. 

“You’ll freeze,”

“You’re warm enough,” she said, the closest thing to affection she could state right now, and when she didn’t flinch at his further motions to approach, he wriggled up against her, moving his arm so she could rest her head on his shoulder–harder than the autumn ground, but at least warmer than it was.

“You’re a good person, love. I’ve met so many bad ones, I would know,” he said, and kissed the top of her head softly.


	54. Final Victory Over The Roomba

Obviously there was no reason for this. They’ve been over it. He doesn’t get this kind of envy over random people that look at her, he doesn’t have the angry jealousy that some men he’s witnessed do when a stranger hits on his girlfriend. 

But without fail, every time she brought home some plain box with the sound of something metallic clanking around in it, he mentally reschedules the next few days becuase her mind is going to be elsewhere.

Logically of course, he _knows_ that no other robot is going to replace him. He’s the only one that can walk and talk, the only humanoid one, the only synthetic she’s ever brought home. And none of the others have ever been in her bed, except for that plush robot that he won for her at the arcade. That one he typically tosses aside every night before she notices. The fact she decided to name it Junior doesn’t ease the discomfort he feels with it around.

And none of them ever really _bothered_ him beyond the fact that they a) took up so much of her time, and b) seemed below her skill level considering that he met her first in person when she was working on the electric generator engines that powered _half of the docks of Luna_.

The robot vacuum though? That thing had to go.

Firstly: for some reason it didn’t recognize him as an obstacle, and consistently was running into his shoes, adding new scuff marks to his immaculate combat boots. Secondly, it’s off switch apparently was optional becuase the damned thing came roving out from under their bed, quickly getting trapped in a stray shirt on the floor. Amanda didn’t understand the mood-killer element of her squealing about how cute the thing was, leaning out of the bed to set it right.

“It’s sentient.”

“It’s _not_.”

Samuels put it in a cardboard box the following morning, early, and considered attempting to pick up where things were left off, but Amanda’s quiet snores were endearing and the urge to wake her wore off in favor of carefully climbing back into bed, shutting down a handful of programs to rest in a peaceful haze, with this warm human so close.

Morning came around, and Amanda half-dancing in his shirt as she moved around their little kitchen making breakfast. He shut off his wifi for a few minutes just to run some background file cleaning, and scrolled through a news article.

A strange sound alerted him, a quiet buzz under Amanda’s humming to some obnoxious rock song that she had been playing when she initiated their rendezvous last night.

“Shhh,”

“What?”

“That! That buzz, it sounds like–”

“Oh, that’s just Spike.”

“…What is Spike?”

“You didn’t like my other names,” _Junior, Samuels Jr. Ripley Jr., Christopher II._ They’ve been together four less than a year. He’s not about to tell her that his distaste for the names is becuase they’re a cold reminder that they won’t have children, as he assumes that in human relationships similar to theirs, it’d be far too soon to bring up that discussion, and really what’s even the point of bringing it up if it’s an impossib—

“Amy….darling. Why did you name it–”

Something very sharp stuck about an inch into his foot and he winced; not out of pain but of the unpleasant and intrusive sensation of something invading his body, the very limits of his ‘personal’ space.

That, and the fact that now he’d have to a) fix it, and b) clean hydraulic fluid off the carpet.

Knowing what he’d see, but still madly hoping that he was wrong, he looked down to see the robot, now stuck to him, it’s sensor lights shifted from blue to red, and six blades of varying shape, size, and origin sticking out from under it’s shell.

“What the hell.” It wasn’t even a question. 

“I figured he could double as a security drone.”

Samuels removed it from himself and set it loose again, noting the scraps of its previous cardboard prison still clinging to a couple of the knives.

“I’m going to take it apart. Remove the knives. And set it on a timer.”

“Can he keep the one?”

“I refuse to be attacked in your home and what’s more than that, I thought I was your gallant security drone.”

“Gallant’s a strong word.”

“Thank you,” he picked up Spike, carefully, and put him into the small spare room where Amanda had set up her workshop. It beeped angrily at being handled, Samuels assuring himself that it was only doing it out of a preprogrammed sensor informing it that it wasn’t on the ground. On the shelves were a few of Amanda’s previous creations and doctored toys that she had turned into menaces. An array of robots of various forms all in a tidy line, dead-eyed, and some with smiling faces. He feels a mix of affection for Amanda’s light hearted and eccentric little projects, and a bit of…something else. 

Very quietly, before closing the door on the murder-vacuum, he had his final say on the matter:

“I’m the first one in her awful little collection, and her favorite, so stop trying to disrupt what little peace and order we have here and _leave us be_.”


	55. even MORE various asks

**How do they hype one another up?**

Considering the sheer hell they’ve both been through, and the fact that they didn’t have exactly charmed lives before they met either, both of them need significant reassurance for a _range_ of things. 

Sometimes it’s daily gentle and often silent reminders for basic self care tasks: Samuels often makes breakfast in the morning, so Amanda has time to brush her hair, wash her face, despite always waking up with barely enough time to do so; Amanda often has to nudge Samuels into running system maintenance, for he doesn’t care for reminders between them of what he is. He’ll come back to full awareness in the morning to find that Amanda had woken up in the middle of the night to plug a travel charger into his arm and the outlet near his bed.

Sometimes it’s grander things, longer open declarations of feelings and trust. There’s an emphasis on the pride and faith they each have for the other one and their ability to succeed at everything from the stupid video game Amanda brought home to trivia night at their favorite dive to _surviving_. Sometimes, always, that’s the hardest thing, even if it’s not the thing at hand every single issue very quickly can spiral into “well if this is all suffering then why am I even bothering to move on from _that_ to begin with?” so keeping each other up is vital.

Sometimes it’s emotional and physical intimacy, keeping the other close, keeping the other feeling like they’re wanted, needed. Even if it’s just a subtle squeeze of the hand when they’re out and overhear something troubling, or the sidewalk gets too crowded and one of them starts to over stress.

And of course sometimes it’s scientifically timed smile of a certain variety perfectly calculated for Amanda to smile his favorite one of hers: this almost-cocky, very bashful grin of acknowledgement and reciprocation. 

**Who picks something up, says a pun with the object then laughs as if it’s the funniest thing they ever heard?**

Christopher was literally not born with a sense of humor. As he (attempts) to develop one, he gets stuck on things that really aren’t funny. Like when putting away groceries and the paper towel roll rolled away

“Amy, look the towels are on a roll,” and while he can’t laugh (he’s trying to come up with a sound/motion combination that feels like laugher but the past few tries were disturbing) the look on his _face_. Amanda doesn’t like puns. Doesn’t like them unless she’s using them to torture someone else.

Chris reminds her four more times that night about ‘on a roll’ until she has to throw the roll at him.

**Who runs up and hugs their partner while the other catches them?**

Oh that’s Amanda, easily. A. Becuase while no one including the canon itself can agree on whether synthetics weigh a lot more or a lot less or comparable to a human and B. Becuase Christopher tries to present as more dignified than that. 

Still, even after months, years, of getting comfortable and enjoying initiating contact and affection, sometimes even in public, he’s still a private person. He doesn’t like people seeing their softer moments, perhaps becuase he has them so mentally tied close to the feeling of security and peace, that it doesn’t feel right being shared with the wider world. Or he’s not into the who public displays of affection thing.

Amanda though? Once they’ve both decided on the fact that they’re okay with small gestures in public (she won’t embarrass him, not too much anyway) and she’ll jump up to hug him tight, once he, out of more spontaneity than he thought he was capable of, picked her up and spun her around. She held to him tighter and he vaguely thought about laughing, even though that ability was still beyond him.

**What small quirks do they love about each other?**

Amanda’s traits that Samuels finds ridiculously endearing:

 **-** she talks to herself, I mean, everyone does a little, but she’ll have a Whole Conversation with herself, almost like addressing a second person, and Christopher has interrupted her train of thought of it MANY times.

-sailor mouth, what originally made Samuels very uncomfortable ends up being almost cute.

-Amanda’s restless, taps her foot under the table, twitches her noes when she’s driving, fidgets with things _constantly_. One night he holds her hand on the couch and she keeps toying around with his hand, gently, subtle, and despite the confusion as to what she was doing at first, he found it comforting. 

-Perhaps becuase of him, or maybe becuase of her mechanical leaning mind, she has a soft spot for robots and small moving things. They have a small collection (though he says it’s _hers_ there’s at least two that he’s developed an emotional attachment to) of robotic toys/figures on a shelf. 

- _she is a cuddler._ He can’t tell her that, can’t let her know that he knows but…how would he not learn? After mentally/emotionally preparing himself to be kept at an arm’s length after she starts to heal and recover, he’s very shocked to find…she still cozies up to him whenever she can. Hugs him. Randomly walks over to kiss him, small touches while they’re passing each other in their short hallway as excuse to feel the other’s presence. 

Christopher’s idiosyncrasies that Amanda tolerates becuase he’s a person and she’s trying to be better at the whole ~nice~ thing:

-he’s by turns over-enthusiastic and fussy over everything. One day he’s almost childishly excited by something obscure, and the next he’s the picture of dull maturity, slightly complaining when Amanda wants to drag him somewhere he deems silly.

-neat freak. Amanda’s idea of clean is “no dirt, and I know where things are” but there’s just _stuff_ everywhere. It makes his circuits burn with stress until he fixes things.

-driven by equal parts logic and emotion, he’s almost impossible to argue with becuase he’s by nature, nearly always right, and also is good at observation: he’s also correct usually on a human level too, just from watching people, watching her, and _learning_. 

-he’s an early bird. Sometimes this is annoying, like when she wants to sleep in and he’s awake and making coffee and coming back to wake her up _when it’s not even eight in the morning on a bloody SATURDAY CHRISTOPHER WHAT THE FUC—._ Other times, it’s kind of nice, his good morning kisses are firm and alert compared to her dreamy soft touches and the contrast has more than once served to both get him back under covers _and_ wake her up at the same time.


	56. Jessica McClaren AU

A vaguely Amy shaped lump on the bed groaned in pain again, and he flinches at the guilt that tugs his central power distributor chord in his chest. She has a high pain tolerance, the medical center’s synthetics told him as much, and the one human doctor that was present at the late hour had repeated it. But from the time they arrived home, and he was finally, _finally_ able to kiss them both (they hadn’t ever experienced it with someone who wasn’t a friend, by the synthetics there recognized what he was immediately, and assumed he was merely an assistant), Amanda hadn’t been quite right.

Christopher wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe that he had only put his hands on the outside of hers as she held the impossibly small human, but took a subtle step back when she tried to let him hold her. 

Now that very tiny, very strange creature was crying in a voice so small and quiet that if it was emitting from a synthetic, he’d be urging it to seek audio repairs as soon as possible. Even Amanda’s human crying wasn’t so fragile sounding. 

“I’ll be up in a second…” a slightly slurred voice said from the bed. Amanda sat up slowly with a hiss of pain.

“Amy–what can I get for you? is the bottle still hot? There’s another two hours before you can take anything else for pain, but I could fetch a half–”

“You’re not–” she let out a small, stifled sound of pain as she wriggled over to get up, “–my medic, despite what the tin can assholes thought. You’re my husband. And I get it. You’re fucking scared. Fine. I’m in pain. A fucking ton of pain, and forgive me if I’m slightly pissed off that you’re the one who’s idea this was, and _I’m letting you name her_ , and you’re….” 

“I–What if–she’s…” standing, statuesque and silent over the tiny sleeping thing, he had watched for hours to be sure that it was still breathing. 

Amanda appeared in his line of vision and picked her up, her voice soft as she tried to quiet her. 

“Chris. Please. We had a list…if you’re not going to hold her, or sleep with me, then–think of a name? I’ll pick a middle one. I loved all the ones on the list, it’s…” she set the infant back down in her little crib, small as a doll’s, and slowly retreated to bed again, tugging a hot (now merely warm) water bottle to her abdomen that she wished was the form of her lover standing coldly to the side.

Barely an hour passes before the baby’s fussing again, and as much as he’s medically aware of human behavior at all life stages, their emotional processes always catch him relatively off guard, and he’s not sure what’s got the poor thing upset this time. Small, uncomfortable mummers quickly turn again into that weak cry and she’s so pitiful and _small_.

Weeks spent, months spent, running numbers and genetic coding, structuring and restructuring broken down strands of his partner’s human DNA, _I have brown eyes, her mother had brown eyes, theoretically I could have had two parents with eyes like hers but I know she wants even odds on that_ , a clone, nearly, entirely formed from her own DNA however altered.

Amanda said before they even started home, quietly to avoid the ears of the synthetics or the human doctor in the halls, “ _I really didn’t think you were going to even the odds on her eyes,”_ even new born, a hour old, the girl’s eyes were darker than her mother’s.

He hears Amanda make a motion to get up, and every ounce of his programming rebels in multiple directions yet again; help her, help the crying human, the human in bed should stay in bed and is best helped by silencing the crying human, don’t touch the crying human, it’s not dying and that’s the only time a non-fully medical programmed android should ever be handling humans under five years of age, you could kill her too easily, you could–

Amy sniffs a little, and even in the dark he catches the long slow blinks that she does when trying to hide the fact that she’s crying.

“Shh, no more of that,” he says, low as his audio can get, and carefully, slowly goes to lift the girl from the crib. “What’s so upsetting out here? You’re not wet, you just ate,” a half finished, comically small bottle sits on the nightstand. Amanda had been against nursing her from the start. _My mom tried to. They sent her out on a job before I was weaned, at least that’s what my grandmother told me when she tried to convince me she was a shitty mother. Sounds more like a shitty job. I wouldn’t drink until I was too weak to cry._

“She’s scared.” Amanda said lowly, half sitting, propped up on a few pillows, the room-temperature water bottle hugged to her lap and belly. 

“It’s too loud here isn’t it? Strange and silent, and cold, and everything’s too big…” he holds her a little closer, a little firmer, and she quiets. “Things will seem better once you’re well rested precious…”

He’s not sure how he didn’t notice, but Amanda had gotten up, and wrapped her arms around his waist. 

“I love you.”

“You can go back to bed, I’ll be right there,”

“No, no I…”

“You need sleep, badly, probably more than Jess does,”

“Jess?”

“Jessica.”

“I honestly thought you’d go with Elena,”

“Do you want–if you’d–”

“Chris no, I like it. I told you.” 

At first he thought to hold Jessica with one hand, and usher Amanda back to their bed with the other, but at the fear of dropping the still-fussy girl he stopped. Amanda painfully, delicately, climbed back into bed.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“No, just…sleep at this point. You’re right–” she stopped as he eased back onto the mattress too, still holding Jess. “What–if one of us–”

“I’ll stay awake and hold her, you won’t crush her,” it was sweet, to see her worry, to see her fret in situations where it wasn’t causing her stress or panic and he almost realized why she liked to tease and toy with him so much. “And I think she’s asleep again,” he smiled, a very quiet breath and heartbeat–steady and healthy, despite their softness–emitted from her.

“Thank you,” Amanda settled at his side, kissing Jessica, rubbing softly at her few little hairs (fair, for now, but she thinks she’s awful light to ever look like his), and then kissing her husband’s cheek, and then his mouth when he turned to face her, and smile against her lips. “For everything. For not being scared, for being here at all. It’s–”

“Darling–”

“I’m supposed to be alone. That’s my story, that’s all I’ve ever been, and without you I’d either be dead, or still alone and asking and wandering…You and I, and–”

“It’s the meds, luv.”

“We’ve done pretty good I think,” she smiled a little, pain constant, but livable, it was all livable, even when she didn’t think it was, all her life had been like that. “She doesn’t seem too fucked up yet.”

“No, not at all,” Jessica clung to him faintly, and he adjusted his internal temperature to suit. “Amy?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,”

“I know,” it wasn’t a joke, not like their usual exchange, but honest in her exhaustion. Christopher smiled, listening close for his humans’ vitals.


	57. Preview of a (much later) LS chapter

“You’re reading one of his?”

“What?” Ripley bent the mass market completely in half, setting it upside down on the coffee table. Samuels winced.

“That author,” he specified. 

“Oh, yeah. I’ve read the whole series so far,”

“I didn’t think high-fantasy interested you much.”

“Not usually, but I’m over the shoot-outs, military lit, and what generally passes for fantasy anymore. Retro science fiction only goes so far too,” she shrugged. “But I kind of like this guy, he’s got a…I don’t know, his perspective is weird. I like it. Except that thing in this one, where they brought in the wyvren hatchery, the way they move…Reminds me too much of shit.”

“I like what he did with them though; dragons are far too beloved of a feature to demonize at this point, especially by a newer voice.”

“You read them?” Amanda perked up.

“…Technically.”

“What did you think?”

“I want to know what you thought—“

“Nope, you first.”

“I think they could have been better,” he began. “Too many instances where you can tell the author is merely reciting a scene instead of creating one. I think several conversations between the knights and their lords are taken from his own experiences,” there’s more he could pick apart, so much more, but Amanda looks crestfallen as it is, and he’s a little confused by it.

“Yeah but I don’t think he was wearing armor, or talking about a surge of monsters in real life.”

“Well, you never know,” he said with a slight grin. 

“What do you mean?”

“You know that I’ve met many, many people through the company. I could have possibly seen him one day,”

“There’s no fucking way that you’ve met McClaren,” Amanda crossed her arms.

“Why not?”

“He lives in Scotland, for one; two, he’s probably ancient, so what would he be doing in the HR office of Weyland-Yutani, on L _una?”_

“I don’t know, but I am familiar with him.”

“You’re lying,” she didn’t bother biting back her smile—she never bothered to around him.

“I’m not lying, and I’ll prove it to you,” she didn’t ask him to elaborate further, and he vanished for a short moment to his office, returning with a hardcover of the second novel.

“So you own a hardcover?”

“Open it,” he said, handing it to her. Amanda raised her eyebrow at him, flicking through the pages, before falling back on something strange on the title page that she missed in her copy of the book.

“holy shit. He signed it for you? The guy never does signings!”

“How do you know he doesn’t?”

“I looked him up once…read a lot about him. I thought you’d like the series, and I was going to try to find a boxed set of it for a gift for you, and see if I could get it signed. But then I found out that a) he doesn’t fucking sign anything ever, b) no one knows what he even looks like, and c) there’s another book left.“

“There’s at least one, but knowing him he’ll probably drag it out for another two. He isn’t exactly…aware of human time and space.”

“Wait…Are you still in contact at all?”

“Yes but you can’t talk to him. I’m afraid to lose you to him,”

“Shut up,”

“I am though; he’s no older than I am. And is…apparently, your type.”

“I have at least three types.”

“He’s…much like me.”

“Then I’d rather keep you, not the updated-famous-writer-you. But I just want to ask him– I’m mad about the alchemist—how could she not know what she was doing? If the king was using her work to help breed the wyverns, she had to know something, she couldn’t be _that_ blind.”

“Perhaps she thought her work would help someone she loved.”

“That’s a whole other thing, that weird statue-hexed-to-life thing by some fuck up of hers? It doesn’t have a soul or a thought of it’s own and it’s…It’s creepy. She never even questioned it. And as far as her research for the wyvren hatchery—how would she think that the king gave a fuck about her science project sex toy—“

“That is awfully cruel, she really thinks that given enough power he might be able to live outside of her study, to be a person.”

“She _fucked_ him though. Without knowing that he can’t say _no_ to her. It was skeevy.”

“We were sleeping together nearly a month before you realized that—at the time—I couldn’t tell you no—“

“Again different story—“

“—is it? And why do you like the character so much if everything she does bothers you that much?”

“…She’s on her own. She came from nothing and now works under the king, not at the big castle of course, but still.”

“I don’t think she thought she was helping the king’s project; or that he was trying to breed monsters in the first place. Her father died in a dead-end battle for him, but…it happens all the time. Accidents. Mishaps. She doesn’t know—“  
“Wait, did her dad die at one of the dens?! Oh my god it’s too long until the next one. And shit, if–” Amanda stops herself. Samuels isn’t going to call the guy up just becuase she wants spoilers, but–, well. Actually, that’s the exact kind of thing that Samuels would do.

“She _does_ find out; and her ‘sex toy’ finds the record of her father’s death.”

“How do you—do you have an advanced copy?” he leaves the room again, and she half expects another treasure, an early release with a note in the front, maybe? Instead, he returns with the notebook she had bought him for Christmas. 

“I’m…getting to the point where it’s beyond something that I can…bend out of my own experiences. I don’t want to lean too heavily on folklore but for now it’s the best I can do to avoid just copying out Beowulf.”

“…….You wrote a fanfiction?”

“Amanda, I wrote the whole series.” His partner is silent, and he’s wondering if she hasn’t already guessed it in the past, but she’s clearly in shock. “The author’s first two initials are ‘C. S.’ and that didn’t—“

“I thought it was a Narnia reference!”

“How didn’t you figure out you’re a main character—“

“……I’m the creepy alchemist?! And–she’s like…minor royalty. And pretty.”

“I think you are,” there’s a moment when it clicks in, the secondary character, her hair color, her attitude, her lover, her missing parent, her drive, her lover’s tender affection towards—and it clicked. And other scenes clicked too.

“You wrote and _published_ a sex scene about us?”

“….I’m sorry? It was a fade-to-black though, nothing happened on the page. In the moment it felt like that’s…where they wanted to go.”

“When were you going to tell me about this? Not–not the alchemist but all of it, how did you even keep this a secret???”

“I started…writing memories. Then I could change them. Slightly, and eventually I could reset them entirely and even add and take things and…I figured out how to make things up. As for how I kept it a secret, well, I don’t require a fraction of the rest that you do, and while I do enjoy relaxing with you, I like feeling as if I’m accomplishing something.”

“Look at you figuring out how to be creative,” she did look proud of him, and she was, even if it would take a while to fully comprehend it.

“I’d appreciate it…if no one else found out.”

“People love you—“

“They love a thing that I made.”

“And you by extension—“

“I’d lose my royalties, copyrights, and probably my waking job too if I was exposed on a large scale.”

“You’re being dramatic—royalties?”

“…I…I’ve been saving them.”

“For what? I mean you make a decent check at the meteo center, and the flat’s paid off so what—“

“If you ever want to try–the genetics laboratory on Titan.. We’ll need tickets, lodging for multiple months. Supplies. Medical—it’s…not—don’t think that you have to make your mind up if you aren’t ready–only if you _did_ I thought having the funds ready would…”

“I’m the one that brought it up, but I think…Another day we’ll talk about it but—spoil it for me,” she changed the subject. “Tell me what’s going to happen.”

“You can read it.”

“…You did’t write another sex scene did you?”

“….Yes but not for publication. There’s one that I was going to include but—it was too tasteless, it didn’t suit the rest of the story, and I thought it unnecessary. They arrive back at the main group the following afternoon, walking closer, touching more. Readers will know something happened.”

“But you did write it.”

“…I did. I also wrote another six hundred pages of plot and character development aside from it.”

“I want to read it,”

“Read the actual story first—please I don’t know what I’m doing with it, and it’s overdue to the editor—“

“I’m sure it’s perfect—“ she remembers the dedications at the opening of each book perfection’s closest being, love of my eternity. “The dedications… I’m…I’m the woman they’re all for. All those thank you’s and acknowledgements and—“

“There’s no one else,” he means it in honesty and love. Of course there’s no one else. So few friends and so few confidants. If there were more, she’d still be the one they’re dedicated to, but as it stands, there is quite literally no one else. 

“Could you read it to me? The whole thing. I want to hear it, if it’s so important to you.”

“That’s a lot of –“

“Just a little! Each night a chapter or two. I want to hear it from you, how it was meant to be heard.”


	58. Consensually!

They over hear some conversation about some movie in a small crowd, and Amanda doesn’t normally get involved in small talk with strangers, let alone groups of strangers, but the premise of the film, a psychological thriller about a woman who doesn’t know she’s a robot, and a man who falls in love with her ( _always that set up…_ Amanda thinks to herself, annoyed, _always the woman who’s artificial, why don’t they ever show male synthetics?)_ and Samuels looks like he wants to vanish on the spot. 

Too bad it’s his fault they’re in this cramped waiting area with all these people, he’s the one that picked this restuarant despite the wait time; Ripley would have just called in pizza on the way home.

“It was so gross, they acted like there was nothing…weird about it.” one of the girls says, her partner, friend or romantic, Ripley can’t tell, answers her

“It was an art film, of course they weren’t going to make a big deal about fucking a robot. Half the art schools in the world are in red light districts.”

“Amanda we could just–”

“You’re the one that really wanted to come here,” she’s amused, and he likes her amused, but the expression on her face also scares him. “What do you think? Weird to fuck a robot or not?”

“It depends on whether or not the robot in question could consent. Though…” he pauses, thoughtful and honest “I’m not so sure that I would.”

“See! That’s the reason it’s messed up,” the first girl said to the others, apparently the majority of the people waiting were from her party. “You don’t know if they’re actually chill with it,”

“It’s not like they can really have opinions,” one of the others said.

“But if they could consent…?” No one answers, and Christopher almost, heaven help the poor man, almost thinks that nothing else is going to be said.

“Well maybe they’ll call us next, I think I see a clear table,” 

but instead of replying to his comment Amanda opens her mouth and:

“I’d consensually fuck a robot.” She says it _just loud_ enough to make sure everyone heard it, and he knows that more discussion is had, about the film, about robots, about synthetics in general, but all Samuels can hear is an echo of himself in his head from earlier that morning, and the nagging fear that everyone else here somehow _knows_. 


	59. "You're cold, come here."

Watching the thought processes of humans play out was always fascinating, or at least entertaining to Samuels. With Ripley, watching her behavior interested him on both a personal and scientific level, or at least, when it wasn’t simply depressing.

“What are you doing?” not that he should be questioning, he’s the one that’s living in her apartment, interrupted (technically nearly ruined or ended) her life by inviting her to a literal death-trap of a station.

“’m working?”

“On what?”

“Dunno…” she mumbled, sounding truly exhausted, sitting up shivering at the kitchen bar while he watched almost guiltily from the couch, a blanket around his shoulders she had put there half jokingly an hour earlier; it had been bestowed oh him and now he felt the need to keep ahold of it like a relic.

“You’re falling asleep; you need to go to bed,”

“I don’t. I can’t. I’m working. I’m not tired.”

“None of those are good enough reasons to not at least try to lie down, in a warm bed, when you’re standing there barely conscious and shaking with cold.”

“Chis, you don’t get it. I can’t sleep. I won’t sleep well, I’ll just toss–” she stopped to yawn, not even putting down a miniature phillip’s head while she rubbed her eyes, setting off a small alarm of concern in Samuels head “–and turn all night, doze off into a nightmare, and wake up angry.”

“You’d at least be warm.”

“of course you don’t get it, you…”

“And I likely never will, Amy, please satisfy my most basic programming that demands I see to your well being and put on a long-sleeved shirt at the least.”

“If I get comfortable I’ll get tired and–I hate this. I used to get so angry at my mother for falling asleep on the couch every night working or doing some dumb shit and now I can’t–i’t just a fucking waste, sleeping losing all that fucking time. I can’t. I have to do something, make something. There’s got to be shit to do even if it’s just have the fucking news running on TV.”

She’s not even sure what she’s doing at more. Replacing the contact locations for the batteries in her radio alarm clock. It didn’t need to be done but if she hit the alarm off switch too hard sometimes it wouldn’t ring the next morning. Then again Samuels had been ‘sleeping’ on the side of the bed with the clock, and shutting it off, rising early, and coming back for her after he was dressed and had breakfast started.

“Amanda, love. If this is some sort of…human neurosis, then I’m sorry to attempt to alleviate it improperly but I truely think that some warmth might help.”

There’s a slam of a tool on the wood of the bar, and the angry flat walk of her heading towards him, but his eyes are too busy trying to search for the screw that he just saw roll off the counter and onto the floor to avoid one of them stepping on it in the morning.

“Alright. Fuck it. I’ll go to bed in an hour if I’m still tired,” she plopped onto the free chair and crossed her arms, at first he thought it was her expression of anger, but going by the goosebumps and the way her hands were clutching the opposite biceps he cold tell she was merely freezing.”

“You’re cold. Come here.” he said, in a voice so practiced at neutrality that Amanda could only tell it was a question and not a command becuase she knew him personally. Her temper was too high to really want to cuddle, but _he didn’t get it_ didn’t get that her human brain wasn’t going to switch on a dime and needed _time_ to go from one mood to another. Positive to negative was fast and biting, like someone throwing cold water on her–it was invasive and hard to change, but to shift from a bad mood to a better one was pulling teeth. Her brain simply wasn’t _wired_ for it. 

A therapist told her once that it was part of some disorder; she looked it up later, feeling guilty, feeling broken. The disorder was rooted in trauma and emotional neglect. Apparently the cold went deep.

“I’m cold all the time. It’s never going to go away.”

“Can I try?” he lifts a corner of the blanket she had given him earlier and he pulls it around her as she sits under his arm and curls into his side. She doesn’t feel cold to him, if anything a little warm, and it worries him that this has all been in her head, a sideshow of something much worse mentally or physically.

“You’re burning up,” she complains, becuase she isn’t sure how else to express the freeing feeling of being warm again. The blanket was warm, his clothes and skin were warm, and she wants to put on warmer clothes too, maybe this time the feeling won’t fade off as soon as the heater shuts off.

“Not really” he lays back, sure that if they do this, she’ll fall asleep and make things harder again, she’ll protest waking up, protest going to bed, and then they’ll repeat this tomorrow too. Amanda follows him though, and with a slight rearranging of limbs and blankets, she’s cozy between him and the back of the sofa.

“And you make a solid argument too,” she smiles, only briefly but brightly, and he’ll take it for now.


	60. "Please Trust Me"

"Please trust me."

Electric sheep, he wished he never read the book, becuase that’s all he can think of right now. Fully aware that he can’t technically be dreaming, fully aware he’s doing something very similar, and only vaguely aware that in reality, he’s very probably shutting down for the last time,

“ _SAMUELS!”_ _Amanda—Ripley—Amanda 01101001 01101110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01101101 01100001 01101100 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01110000 01110010 01101001 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110101 01110011 01100101 RIPLEY. Human hands on metal and industrial glass that could likely make bullets bounce. Heat. Smell of burning plastic. Not a smell, an_ alert _. Am–RIPLEY–shouting. Alert. Smoke. Alert. Electrical fire. Alert. Battery depletion, emergency power. WARNING. UNAUTHORIZED WEYLAND-YUTANI SYSTEM ACCESS: APOLLO. 01100011 01101111 01101110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01101101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110111 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01110100 01101111 01100011 01101111 01101100 01110011 00100000 01111001 00101111 01101110 00111111_

 _“_ Don’t move,” Amanda says, softly, quietly, and no notice flashes in his mind. He can’t even draw up the time and temperature to his line of vision, only focused on her. Amanda in some soft-to-the-touch (to his touch) set of nightclothes, perched next to him on some landscape that pixelates at the edges where the water meets the sky.

 _“_ What if I want to?” he lifts a hand, unhindered by any kind of code, nothing stopping him, as if he can make the choice himself. 

He pushes her hair back behind her ear, revealing a smile, and leaves the hand on the side of her face, a smile softer than he’s ever seen on her forms, a little blurred but nothing his AI can’t form in decent clarity from knowledge of the human facial structure.

_You’re dreaming._

_“Samuels, you’re dying.”_

_“_ If you’re going to move, then move over.”

“I like it right here though,” he’s smiling back at her, and she’s next to him now, playing shoving him aside on a blanket, pattern unknown, blurred like it’s not really there. They’re on the floor. Grass. No, sand. They’re on a beach. There’s water meeting sky on the horizon and as the world fades off into nothing beyond them he’s only a little aware of heat. Fire, small fire, contained, safe in front of them. No one else is around. Why is she in nightclothes outside. Originally it was snowing. 

“You’re right, it’s cozy,” words, logic, dialogue, her shirt stretches as she twists and he can access her shoulder, her throat free of those worrying bruises he saw on her when she came into the room earlier–hour–minutes–now?–he’s glad for it, this can’t, not even here, tug it aside himself, but now he leans forward and kisses down her neck, his eyes flutter closed against his will, and he forces them open. 

There is a demon in a metal room and he is on the floor. 

There is an unidentified biological hazard in synthetics, and Ripley has left.

“Please, trust me?” 

“Yes?”

“Don’t force your eyes open like that, stay here with me,” she mumbles, and a hiss from the room melts into the background of spray from the waves crashing twenty feet away from their fire, a log in it cracking and hissing too.

“I…I am looking at you. I can see you.”

“Then don’t vanish again.” She curls into his side, tilts up to kiss him as she has just been kissed, but he isn’t sure of the feeling of it, isn’t sure he doesn’t prefer if she were to kiss him on the mouth, or else work her away around every bit of his surface area, so he can best figure where he likes to be kissed by her lips, flesh-tone, but he likes the color. He likes all her colors, in the dark everything is tinted dark blue, or silver, or orange from the fire-glow. Amanda in technicolor like a night sky painting where the Sun is still brilliant orange.

Her hair looks longer than it should, he plays with it while she breathes steadily. He lifts her wrist, kisses the inside of it, kisses wherever he can touch her, and Amanda smiles, moves onto his lap, and steadying herself with hands on his shoulders, she kisses his mouth. It’s nice, very nice, but he’s unsure if Amanda really wants to do this.

“Trust me,” she says again, like she’s reading his mind that he feels strange and wants to try to open his already-open eyes again.

“I do trust you.”

“You did everything you could. You helped me. I’m only upset that you’re trying to leave,”

“Leave where? I don’t want to go.” he’s suddenly aware of something else, a sense that he’s moving backwards even though he sees his hands on her arms.

01000001 01000011 01000011 01000101 01010000 01010100 00100000 01000001 01010000 01001111 01001100 01001100 01001111 00100000 01010000 01010010 01001111 01010100 01001111 01000011 01001111 01001100 01010011 00111111

Sees his hands around her throat. 

Sees his hands on her arms, holding her to him as she’s holding him to herself.

“Stay with me, Christopher?”

“I want to. I am.”

“You know that Ripley doesn’t love you?” she asks, strange, becuase she is Ripley, and does. 

“I know that. I don’t know if I love her myself.”

“You know that Ripley could love you? There’s a chance. She thinks you’re dead, you are dying. But if you were alive, she could have loved you one day. You probably already love her, even if you don’t recognize that feeling yet.”

“Amanda—”

“You won’t exist soon.”

“I know–I know, please I don’t want to–I don’t want to leave–I love you, and I don’t know what that means, but I want to know, and if you really think I’m alive why–What if I was human, what if we had—had _time_ and you knew me—Amy please, stop–” her image is fading, their fire is gone, the ocean is silent, still. The sand lost it’s texture and the blanket is the same color as the ground now. 

Now everything is black, he’s focusing on an image, but Amanda is not there as he’s seen her, she is in her jumpsuit from earlier–ten minutes–98 seconds–ago and she’s injured and shaking, and there’s blurs around her eyes through the grim from tears of pain, shock, fear, grief. 

“Samuels?”

“Ripley.” 

Everything is gone but her, and he tries to focus on something smaller, on her eyes, on her face, keep it clear as long as he can.


	61. You're in love with her

He could have looked over her file one more time, one last time, but he would be seeing her again in a few hours now, and he already knew the thick document cover to cover. Every house and school and passed up career for another contract job with the company. Now working out of Luna, a birthright citizen, leaving every place she ever knew on Terra, entire lives she could have led, all left behind in the dust. 

She had nodded, accepting the offer in the end, and would be dropping by on her way home from work to sign the required papers. He had done all he could to secure her a pay higher than what she would be missing at her current job, though he didn’t tell her he knew what she made, found a stipend to take care of rent (though he knew her rent, and it wouldn’t cover it, but perhaps it would cover a fee for storing some of her things nearby?). He’s tried to get everything for her he could, even try to carefully suggest her own cabin on the ship (denied).

“Is the woman here yet?”

“Not yet Decker,” Samuels, on both his main desktop display and two side screens was going over more information on her, nothing he hasn’t committed to memory. From the day the case was dumped on him by the new human recruit in the doorway, the story of this contrary and forceful person had encompassed nearly all his substantial processing abilities.

“Good. I’m aiming to be long gone when that raging bit–” Decker met his employee’s eyes over the top of his screen. If he knew better he’d say nothing, but he didn’t “What? She’s fucking nuts. She actually stood on the boss’s desk once. She punched the guy that worked here before me.”

“Has she? Or are these all stories?”

“I know for a fact the last one happened,”

“So do I,” he scrolls through and pulls up the police report. “No charges pressed. She had him admit he grabbed her inappropriately in a bar. It wasn’t on the company premises.”

“Don’t you have all this shit memorized by now?”

“I don’t have to memorize things. All data is committed on sight, it takes reformats to remove large visual input.” More than that, up to the day that he had been given her case–not even her case, he had found her file attached to the case and fell into something strange. Stranger than coming into the awareness he had been so recently, stranger than having opinions and preferences. The way that Ripley’s sullen face stuck in his head, and the way her voice was still replaying in his audio from earlier in the day made him nearly certain that he wasn’t evolving, but malfunctioning. 

“Then why are you—”

“I want to be sure there’s nothing–I’ve missed. I miss things. I’ve been trying to understand her differently now that I’ve met her.”

Decker saw in mirror through the transparent screens what the synthetic was looking at. Images of Ripley including some of his own visual playback from the meeting today. The synthetic’s eyes following hers, focusing not just on her signals, on how best to persuade her but….watching. Searching. Focusing on changes in her expressions in a way most synthetics don’t bother. 

Most, if they could, didn’t bother to speak so human-like either. What he was never was mentioned, by either of them, though Ripley had been to the office enough times to know him for an artificial instantly.

“Samuels, what is all this?”

“I’m only doing my job, Decker.” he bites back the _like you should be doing right now_. 

“No, this is something—Samuels, if I didn’t know you this would scare me.” Decker tore his eyes from the screens, the visual feed was focusing on Ripley’s hands as she handed him a mug of sludgy black coffee. He crossed the room to the little fish tank, a small fish that he had discovered recently Samuels had named ‘Fish’ hovered near the food slot.

“Would you feed him while I’m gone? It shouldn’t be more than a couple months.”

“Not a problem, but–”

“just a pinch, twice a day. I’d rather he’s not dead when I return, and Ripley will have more papers to sign off on, and I’d like her to think I’m responsible enough to keep a fish alive.”

Decker looked at him, trying to formulate a question when the office’s intercom rang.

“ _Samuels unit, C., client arrived. Client Ripley, Amanda.”_

The synthetic’s face shifted entirely, one of a vague mix of fear and– _or nerves_?

“Samuels?”

“Decker, could you–not be here when she comes up, I wanted to speak to her without–”

“You’re in love with her.”

“I don’t have time for mockery, I–Decker?”

“You are, aren’t you? You’ve been obsessed with her, and this is just–”

“Decker it’s not–I swear, I’m _incapable_ of it, it’s–”

“You’ve been getting creepy-human for months and I’ve been covering for your ass becuase you’re nice, but–”

“Decker if they find out about any of my…faults they’ll have me gutted for scrap parts and you know it.”

“You’re bloody in love with a human. And not any human, but the queen bitch herself how in the hell–”

There was a knock on the door.

“Get out of my office Decker. I have work to do.”

“Alright, fine. Just–if you glitch any farther–you know what they think happened on the Nostromo. You know what happened on Outer World 327. It’s not unheard of, and I don’t want you hurting someone.”

“I’d deactivate first.”


	62. Are you drunk?

It wasn’t the over-affectionate hello, or the slurred words, or the strangely over-confident-yet-wobbly-strut to the kitchen for a pair of glasses that gave it away.  
  


“We should probably go to bed,”

“Why the hell should we do that? it’s early, and you wanted to see the film in the park tonight.”

It was nearly midnight. And _that_ was what gave it away.

“Christopher…?”

“Yes, my beautiful, darling wife?”

“Not your wife, not yet,” she had a ring on, he had one too, but they hadn’t worked out the technicalities of an illegal marriage yet. “But really: are you drunk?”

“Not possible, my dearest,” he poured a glass of wine to the brim and handed it to her. “I can’t get drunk on alcohol. Or any substance. You know that?”

“I know that. But I don’t know why you’re acting like–”

“Like what?”

“Did you try to run an update or something?” she asked, annoyed, arms folded across her chest.

“Nooooope.” he smiled, wide, waltzed back across the floor to her to kiss her on the cheek. “I’m not allowed to be happy and enthused when you get home?”

“If we go see that movie, it means I get less than two hours of sleep.”

“So?” Samuels gently eased her arms apart, took a hand in each of his.

“So, you’re the one who more or less dictates my bedtime like I’m a child.”

“You hate it when I do that,” his hands worked their way up to her shoulders and she fought the instinct to shove him off.

“Yeah, but why are you so–”

“If I’m being perfectly candid, sweetheart, I think…I might have contracted….some sort of, er, bug?”

“A glitch?”

“Mmmm,” he purred, hands working towards the buttons of her work shirt. “Perhaps it’s limited….my inhibitions…some of my manners,”

“If you’re not right in the head, we’re not doing anything,” even if his hands working on the front zipper of her sports bra were a little nervous in their movement, and it would have been sweetly charming if he wasn’t so messed up.

“But think about it–I have no sense of….protocol. Anything you—want? Things you offer I never accep-t becuase I’m too poliiiite.”

“Chris if you want head just fucking say yes next time but I am so far from suggesting anything to you short of a really cold shower.”

He pouted. The bastard actually pouted.

“I love you, and–and I know I said..The same thing to you when you came from? From the Kubrick bar! The one they should have called the Monolith! That one! Yes when you came home…and tried to just rip my fuckin’ shirt off, hmmmm–I told you not if you weren’t sober.”

“Uh huh. And you’re not. When does the patch for the bug come out?”

“Less than eighty-teen hours. Plenty of time for a few rounds and maybe a bath.”

“Look, it’s not happening, maybe we can make out on the couch if you want but _nothing_ else I’m serious I am–remove your hand or I will break it.”

“Is that a no?”

“Correct. You cannot touch me until that patch is out.”

“Amy–what about–what about sleep if–if we don’t go to the film–”

“Okay fine you can still go into rest next to me but nothing else.”

“But–”

“It’s consent Chris, I’m half afraid you don’t mean it every time you give it, but now I know you don’t, and I’m not…I’m not crossing that line of whatever moral code I’ve got left in me, okay?”

“….Can we still take a shower?”

Amanda rolled her eyes, a distant part of her aware of the karma this was for last month’s night-out’s horrible ending.


	63. Soft Request

Rain belted the window, the kind of cold and wet that creeps under your skin and makes your bones chill. 

At least, that’s how Amanda had described it this morning, coming back after her run and six missed calls from Christopher, imploring her to come back in before she made herself sick. Of course he knows by now to not intrude on her physical routine, not to comment on when she eats more or less, how she panics if she can’t get in a morning run, and even when she’s too tired to move she’ll lift her arm weights, before taking a shower and finally, finally going to bed.

Still.

She shouldn’t have stayed out so long in the storm. Chris watches, a little helpless, as she sheds her wet clothes, shivers on her way to the shower, hisses (he _can_ hear well, though he won’t remind her) at the scalding water hitting her skin. Amanda half slumps back into the main room of the flat, dragging a heavy blanket behind her.

“Are you cold?”

“Chris, either shut up and take me up on this one single, rare offer to snuggle, or keep talking and I’ll just go to bed.”

“Consider me silent,” 

“Good. I prefer this to my back up plan,” she tossed the blanket at him, and he draped it around his shoulders, leaving plenty aside, room for her. She crept into them, pulled her fleece-clad legs up under herself, and leaned into him.

“Feel better yet?”

“Nausea, chills, at least if it’s contagious you won’t get it.”

“I’m almost sure, you’re just frozen,” he pulled her onto his lap, her shaking still even now that she feels warm. 

“You look awfully happy about my predicament of being a human popsicle.” She watched his smile, and felt her heart get a bit less frozen.

“Nothing. You’re just very–adorable.”

“Don’t call me that,”

“Adorable?”

“Chris, _handsome_ , you’re on thin fucking ice.”

“Handsome? You compliment me and I’m supposed to be bothered by it?”

“Are you?”

“Not at all,” there was something devious in his grin, and Amanda wanted to see where this lead, but more than that, she wanted to–

“Kiss me before you say something else that annoys me,” it’s as close as she could get to affectionate at this hour, but he obliges, trying not to smirk into it.


	64. [Holds the other’s hand when they think the other won’t notice]

good lord he could watch her forever like this, inches away and _peaceful_ in a way she never really looks when she’s awake. Everything of her finally relaxed and calm, healing. Her very presence makes him feel secure despite the fact that if something were to happen, he’d be–practically speaking–the one that could do the most damage. It’s why on the ship she insisted on sleeping on the side of the bunk with the wall, so that he was between her and the door.

here in the relative safety of their apartment, she requests the same. 

she turns a little, hums, apparently still mostly asleep despite rolling over completely.

he’d love to trace her spine, even if only ghosting the back of his hand down it, marked here and there by purple bruises, but it seems to intimate a gesture when she’s not awake to protest it if she’d like to, and he settles back into just looking at her, the patterns her hair makes as it’s tangled.

though.

he could reach around her, carefully, take her hand, hold it in his, feel a little more grounded, a little less like he’s floating in space.

his careful, slow grip on her fingers barely connects before she turns back over to face him again, squinting in the dark.

“Oh–Sorry, I thought you were asleep,” he takes his hand back, not sure what to make of her confusion.

“Christopher,” God, he loves the sound of his name in her voice.

“I am sorry,”

“Christopher we’re–” she looks confused, not only from the sleep, but of the situation entirely, and he’s instantly plagued with the feeling he’s done something very, very wrong. 

“I didn’t–

“Chris we aren’t _dressed._ We were fucking three hours ago, and you were trying to _hold my hand_?”

“…I should have asked–”

“I appreciate the fixation on consent, but babe, you can do more than that. Consider this a blanket statement of _yes_ if you want to–” what? She’s not used to affection like this, not recently at least, and her two most recent partners weren’t so soft in their forms of expressing their care. “–to hold _me_ or hug me or something. Feel free, and feel free to hold my damn hand if that’s all you want too.”

“Thank you. For the clarification! Not the permission, becuase you said yesterday that you don’t like gratitude for consent…Sorry. This is–new, to say the absolute least.”

“Hey, you’re learning,” she smiles, she’s too tired for this, but it seems every night, every hour makes some new issue rise, and she’s waiting on something more extreme, at the same time as waiting for the day that nothing new comes up, and they’re both finally fully adjusted to this.

Well. Maybe not fully adjusted. She hopes the novelty doesn’t wear off, or at least when it does that the sense of wonder doesn’t. Having someone who looks at you the way you used to look at the stars is addicting, and she has a feeling that he finds her equally intriguing in that regard. 

“What about now? If I wanted to–touch you right now, could I?”

“You could, and I’d let you.”

There’s no time wasted in inching closer to her–which does surprise Amanda a little, in the past lovers would pull her close, but Samuels meets her on her side of the bed before moving to hold her close, an arm around her and up her back, and if not for the firm but gentle tangle of his hand in her hair, if not for the contact of skin on skin, his embrace would look more like a child snuggling tight to a favorite teddy bear before falling asleep. 

“I’m sorry I woke you,”

“I was sleeping too light anyway,” this isn’t comfortable for her, not to fall asleep in this position anyway, but he warmth coming off of him is nice. The subtle differences in feeling between him and a human are neither comforting or concerning. 

“Is this alright?” 

Amanda shifts a little, moving up on her pillow a bit, moving onto his as he moves back a little to make room for her.

A few more attempts at positions and she’s settled with him on his pillow overlapping the one that was hers, still close. Sleep closes in again.

“Chris, wait,” she yawns, he doesn’t know what she wants him to wait for, but she reaches for his opposite hand and holds it tight. She smiles a little before shutting her eyes again for the night, and he smiles, considering the pros and cons of rest mode.

maybe in another hour. for now he wants to focus on the closeness, and the way her hand still holds his in her sleep.


	65. things you said when you were scared

“What’s got you so afraid?”

She has…attitude. He likes that about her, he liked it last night on their date, and he liked it when he walked her home. She’s not the first time he’s stayed out all night either, but he–

“It’s nothing, it’s…”

“You’re not married, are you?” her hair is a brighter red than hers was. It helps, but he almost wishes they were more of the same than so brightly different. 

“No! No–it’s–the opposite. I suppose.”

“I figured,” her voice lowers a little, as he slow his frantic shirt-buttoning. Out of fashion, it certainly doesn’t help him blend in, but it’s as if his clothes have worn out too much in the past decades, “Most men aren’t so…calm after a hookup. I figured you were recently split or widowed.”

“I–I should go.”

“How long?”

“Too long. I don’t talk about her.” Not to other women, however rare they are, however much he refuses to take them to his own home, to _her_ home, to _her_ bed. That he still refers to their room as hers, becuase to do otherwise might just drive him insane, as if he hasn’t already pried off the lid once to the wood and iron urn on her desk to see the dust himself, to prove to himself that she’s not just–missing.

“Married young?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“So you married right off the assembly line,” her arms folded across her chest. She dressed last night, and it was after returning that her date had pulled her close, buried his face in her hair, all while asleep, as if it was the most natural thing. Not a normal procedure in her experience.

“You knew?”

“Kind of hard not to,”

“….did you find out before, or–or after we–?”

“Last night at dinner. I don’t care, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think we were going to—come back here, I normally let–not that there’s much normal, you’re only the third since–” he’s sick, if he can be sick, because her soft blue eyes are so kind, and so inviting, and he’s been alone for so long without softness of kindness that he _can’t_ have it, he has her at home, he has her in a box on her desk becuase damn her wishes for burial, he can’t do that, not while he’s still around. Something of her has to stay. It’s _her room._

 _“_ It’s okay, seriously. So…how long?”

“We were together or—” he can’t do that math right now, literally: he has removed the ability to do so, in a rather moody spiral of grief about twenty years ago. Better to imagine the chance of so many more years than they were, that she was so much older, maybe that he was older too, able to join her.

If he doesn’t have a soul, surely it’s better to live with her memory than to become nothing, and all those moments and all that love lost forever?

_Like tears in rain, she would have said, like that tattoo on her shoulder._

_“_ Since she passed?”

“Thirty seven years.”

“Damn, older than I usually go for then,” he doesn’t look much older than her, and again, she doesn’t mind. He was nice, sweet, not bad looking, and she liked talking to him. Liked how he treated her last night after she talked him inside.

“I’m sorry–I–this is awful form, but I shouldn’t”

“She won’t hate you for it, for me, or someone else.”

“I know. She told me as much. Told me to live over and over. But I won’t. I _can’t_.”

“Why not?”

He’s not sure how to explain the special, horrifying levels of hell that it would be to live through it again, over and over. More than that, he can’t live with himself knowing that he’ll never love someone else quite the same, or _worse_ , if decades away he meets someone who fills not only her void but others she didn’t, someone who matches him even better, and ends up the love of his life, his first wife only a memory of a nice life in favor of the brilliance of the next.

Unacceptable. 

“It wouldn’t be fair to you, to anyone. I’m…I have to go home.”


	66. The Infamous Warning Stickers

The first stickers on the empty wall were ignored mostly. Neither of the synthetics were worried about human safety warnings, each of them having enough information on the ship’s internal workings to render visual notices useless. If their respective humans required a few more reminders they weren’t about to pass judgement. 

Of course, until the stickers started adding up.

“What do you think they are?” Davis said, increasingly confused becuase there were now _four_ very different warning stickers. 

“I don’t know,” Samuels looked woeful at the glass of hydraulic fluid in front of him. They weren’t low enough on water that anyone organic should worry yet, but low enough that he wasn’t going to make himself tea or coffee for enjoyment. Coolant and ozone-tasting hydraulics it was, and he was grateful he could at least shut off his ability to taste and smell.

“It’s not for anything behind the panel; it’s just the extension of the larder back there.”

“I know,”

“Are they making note of mishaps?”

“If they were then they’ve developed some incredible healing abilities. Ripley hasn’t had any new marks on her. Has Hendricks?”

“You just saw her an hour ago,”

“I meant,” he took a hesitant sip of the milky substance, grimaced, and shut off all the nerves connected to his mouth to avoid sensing it’s texture, “I meant–where I wouldn’t have seen.”

“Oh. No, nothing new. Even if she had used a healing accelerant the scar would have been visible.” Davis had no difficulty in relaying any kind of reference to his private life, or what passed for life with him. Samuels didn’t wonder (with some guilt) if it wasn’t becuase Davis was less emotionally advanced than he was, or (more likely, according to Ripley) Samuels was himself just over sensitive. 

“Do you think it’s purely for decoration? Perhaps marking the days?” he tried.

“There’s a calendar hanging four feet away, and another in navigation. We have on in our cabin as well.” Davis sat at the table across from his companion, still staring at the panel.

“Humans do need reminded about things more than we do,”

“Maybe. Or it’s some kind of code, or a game, that they’ve come up with to alleviate boredom.” Davis suggested.

“That’s a more likely answer. This has been…dull.” 

Three months. _Three whole bloody months_ they’ll have to travel, and they’re only half way through it. Normally, anything over a fortnight would have the crew taking advantage of cryo, but with one malfunctioning pod, the humans opted to just live with it. 

Barely a month in, Amanda and Zula were climbing the walls–not just metaphorically, Samuels walked past the loading dock and found that they were trying to attach footholds to the bay doors to improvise a rock climb wall. It must not have worked becuase when Amanda came back to their cabin that night she had a coolpack pressed to her hip, a growing bruise under it.

————————————-

The two synthetics decided for sure that the badges were part of some kind of game after the full set of warning notices was added by the end of day 37, and letters began to appear under them.

Day 48, and nearly four in the morning by standard earth time, and Samuels walked, slightly glitchy, to the galley for a glass of water for Ripley, and a tall one of coolant for himself. He was a little surprised, considering the hour, to see Davis sitting at the table; he was far more surprised to see that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and had small beads of sweat along his brow.

Military androids, regardless of make or model didn’t sweat save for under _extreme_ duress, and Samuels, the poor bastard, almost actually _asked_ Davis how he had become so overheated. 

“Is Ripley getting bored too?” Davis smirked, and slid the rest of the thermos of coolant across the table. “Zula finally passed out, and if I didn’t take something soon I would have fried.”

“Thank you, and…Er, I wouldn’t say she’s bored exactly. Why do you ask?”

“Becuase you’re overheating so badly that thermal vision registers you as a solid red blur.” 

“I should get that, thermal vision,” Samuels said, half absentmindedly, drinking some of the coolant before filling Ripley’s water bottle at the tap. Mostly, he wanted the exchange to end; they both knew what the other was doing in the galley at that hour, and he had no desire to learn any more than he had. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“If Ripley doesn’t kill you by then,”

“…r-right.”

—————————

The following morning, Davis went back to the galley, Zula in the showers, and he might as well have something for breakfast waiting for her.

Samuels must have had the same idea, as the smell of something sweet coming from the ship’s generic oven, and the table was set. He was already seated and staring at the panel where the stickers were. 

“What? Still trying to figure out their game?” Davis asked, turning on the coffee machine–the only updated equipment on their fourth-hand ship.

“No…I think I figured it out.” 

“What did Ripley–?”

“She didn’t tell me but…Look.”

Davis looked closer at the array. Under each sticker were letters Z and A. Some stickers had only one or the other, some had both more than once, and under the ‘MACHINE RUNS HOT’ warning, there was one letter Z, and two letter A’s.

“You said that Hendricks fell asleep last night?”

“I did, what does that have to do with–” Davis watched Samuels take a long drink of a fresh thermos of coolant. 

“And she didn’t wake up when you returned?”

“No,”

“Amanda was awake when I came back…and, well. There’s two marks under her initials.”

“ _Al_ right then.” Davis inspected the game board closer. “They’re going in order. Electrical shock is next. Wait no,” it was faint, but there was an ‘A’ written under it, “Samuels that’s not how that’s supposed to work, you should get that–”

“Thank you, I was _completely_ unaware.”

“Unaware of what?” Ripley yawned, walking heavily into the room and beelining for the coffee machine. 

“Nothing,” Davis answered for him, seeing that Samuels reaction time was lagging. Amanda noticed too.

She paused at the panel, took a pocket knife out of her belt, and scratched an ‘A’ under ‘dead battery.’

\------------

“I’m not doing that,” he replied to the admittedly _fascinating_ suggestion she had whispered in his ear.

“Why not?”

“You’re only suggesting it because of that awful game you and Zula are playing.” For half a second, something that might be fear, possibly shame, passes through Amanda’s eyes before her eyes narrow slightly, and her whole body seems to relax against his.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she leans in, kisses his neck lazily. “Zula and I have only played cards recently.”

“You’re trying to seduce me into forgetting about it, and it won’t work.”

“Not even for a few minutes?”

“…..well I would hope it would last more than a few minutes.”

“Fine.” her posture changes, and she tugs her nightshirt back down, falling backwards onto the bunk in a way that makes Samuels _still_ panic for a moment that she’ll hit her head on the wall. “How did you figure it out?”

“Davis and I saw each other in the galley last night. We were looking for coolant, and I got your water.”

“Wow that’s all the time it took Zula to tire out? She must have gone hard.”

“I don’t want to know details of their private life? And I would rather you didn’t share details about ours?”

“Okay fine, I’ll stop sharing information, now can you take your pants off, because I’ve gotten really used to this new routine, and I’m not in any mood to break it.”

“I love you, but you’re losing your mind.”

“You’ve been pretty damn willing all this time though,” she’s right, he knows she is. He’s been enjoying the hell out of her latest addiction too; they’ve always been an affectionate pair in private, but it hasn’t been since their first days sleeping together that they’ve been like this.

“True, and it’s been lovely, but it isn’t healthy for you. We’re only at the halfway mark of the trip.”

“What do you think people did before entertainment was invented?”

“They invented entertainment.”

“Tell me why I love you?”

“I still don’t know the answer to that one.”

“I’m bored, you’re here, I’m here, and we have no duties or deadlines to answer to. We’ve survived yet another trip into hell and back. I’m not tired yet, and for some reason I still find you incredibly attractive.”

What person, he wonders, in any half-decent state of mind would reject her suggestion? Amanda Ripley with her bright eyes on him, intelligent and full of cool fire, her soft lips in a smile that managed to be mature and playful at once, her hair down around her shoulders, her long legs dangling off the edge of the bunk, muscles in her arms tensed and defined…She says she finds him attractive but he’s half convinced that even if magnets don’t work on the alloy of his skeletal structure, there is some element that on the most basic level of existence draws him into her orbit, a gravity stronger than any star he’s ever seen.

“Alright…but we’re doing what I want this time.”

Not that nights of increasingly offbeat, unique, and exerting techniques had been unpleasant at al, but he likes things–

“So plainer than toast?”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he sits down next to her, drawing her close.

They are nearly inseparable when alone, making up for the lack of any affection expected from a married couple displayed in front of anyone, even friends. To see him kiss her on the cheek would have been shocking to nearly everyone they knew, but behind a closed door she still could only sleep well with him at her back or her at his.

Ripley stood up and held her hands out to him.

“Nope.”

“Come on, it’s not that wild, and we’ve done it before like that,”

“Not yet,” he stands next to her, kisses down her neck to her shirt collar (his shirt collar, if one wanted to be technical. For not understanding possession very well he was always affected by the sight of her in _his_ old work shirts) he angles her neck up him, kisses her on her open mouth, and runs his other hand up her thigh, then higher, slowly, and ….Three years with her and he has her undoing down to a science. The pressure, the places, the duration, the words, even his own temperature in comparison to hers, and while he doesn’t like the sound of her begging–

“For f— _fffuck’s_ sake, please just _do it already_ ,” she hisses.

“Explain you and Zula’s game to me first,” he doesn’t stop anything he’s doing, but he doesn’t let her get any farther either.

“Evil,”

“I prefer ‘effective’“

“Fine. Mechanical caution signs. You and Davis are, basically, mechanical. Sorry. We assigned meanings when the literal ones didn’t fit right. Keeping score. First one to complete the set gets bragging rights.”

“That’s it?”

“Winner also gets rights to the bathtub in the captain’s shower, exclusive ‘do as you please’ rights. Pants. Off.”

“That’s…what you and Zula have been humiliating us over?” 

Amanda groaned, mentally giving up on literal or metaphorical scoring for the night.

“You keep saying me and Zula, as if Davis isn’t the one that found the stickers and made the first joke about it.”

“Davis what now?”

“ _Davis_ found the stickers in the mechanical supply closet under a toolbox. _Davis_ made a joke about getting fingers caught in machinery, and then started coming up with jokes about a few others, Zula and I just filled in the rest and said we should keep score.”

“You mean to tell me that he’s been _aware_ of the game!?”

“Rights to the captain’s bath was his idea for the prize.” her partner was silent “Chris?”

“I’m going to kill him.”

“I mean, I think that means we win automatically but please don’t.”


	67. Jessica McClaren AU 2

“Don’t give me that look,” he said to her, softly, quietly, almost mischievously as he caught her pout from the corner of his eye. “We only need a couple more things, and then we go home.” if he could only figure out which of the cough syrups it was Amanda wanted–he didn’t forget exactly, he couldn’t, but Amanda only said ‘get the one that doesn’t take like shit.’

“ _beeelm_.” 

“Yes, you’re right, the one in the green box, that’s what she said. Thank you.” 

Six months old, and starting to babble, their infant was less of an infant by the hour it seemed, and this wasn’t his first time taking her out by himself, but with Amanda laid up, he offered to get groceries and take the little chatterbox with him. 

Jess didn’t seem to agree.

“ffffiblezz fwwezz mweeesfiss”

 _“_ I know you’re tired, we’re going to go and pay, and then we can go home,” 

Jess’s face contorted into something close to anger, which, he had to admit, looked comical. 

“mmmmemme mmma”

“Exactly, we go home, you get to see your mama,” he softly fluffed the hair on her head.

“ _aaaapphfrs!”_

 _“_ Sorry, sorry, here we go,” he pushed the cart a little, slowly at first to avoid jostling her, the groceries, and the six impulse toys she seemed to look at more intently than the others. Perhaps trusting his ability to care for her wasn’t the reason Amanda wasn’t eager to let them go alone, but becuase they always seemed to come home with…extra.

“pebbbbep bep mwes”

“No, I won’t ride the cart, I’m not your mother. I would also likely break the cart,” 

“ _pebbbep!”_

 _“_ I don’t know what you mean. I am trying to respect your language acquisition process but–”

**“ _pebb. bep.”_**

"I’m sorry, Jessie.”

She made a face, a pout. Christopher had thought that her sweet, quiet expression of anger was something like her mother’s, but Amanda had taken one look at her hours-old daughter’s petulant expression and told her husband that the look was his entirely.

Not sure how to prevent her from breaking out into sobs, not when she was this tired, he leaned forward, and kissed her head. 

Jess stopped pouting, reaching out and smacking his face, or trying to hold it. Perhaps the closest she could really get to a hug as strapped down into her baby seat. He gently held her shoulder, tickled her pudgy chin until she giggled.

“Homeward now, and we don’t tell your mother that all these toys are for you okay?”

“fwip.”

“Perfect.”


	68. Things you said when we were the happiest we ever were

It hasn’t been so long that she’s deluded herself into thinking that she knows him completely, it’ll take a lifetime to do that, and she hopes that’s how long they’ll have, but she knows him enough to understand that his eloquence is limited when he’s on emotional overload. She doesn’t know if it’s his personality, or if it’s just the stress of feeling on a mind that wasn’t built to handle the weight of things like fear, joy, anger, and love.

“You are…an angel?”

“Did you mean that to sound like a question?”

“Did you mean that to sound like a question?” she doesn’t get it either, anniversary at the beach resorts on Mars was only marginally less tourist-infested than their home satellite had become, but his model was retired three years ago, and while he once hid well in plain sight, second-hand retired office synths with his face, voice, his everything-but-heart, were walking around, purchased by families and young career people eager to look professional. They’ve seen three with his face this trip alone.

Still, they’ve both wanted to see Mars for so long, and Amanda was finally feeling up to travel having healed through the damage on her body and mind after her and Zula’s most recent crusade against the hellspawn ‘bugs.’

It was Olivia and Viola who insisted that the two go home. They were done. The oil-black creatures they hunted down based on whispers and rumors were nowhere to be seen, and all they found in their place were genuine bugs, infestations that the crew could handle without the extra two sets of hands.

Ripley was as open with their relationship in public as Samuels was comfortable being, which normally wasn’t much, not since his face became recognizable. Some weeks he’d limit shaving and wear his glasses more often; it made him less noticeable, but both he and his partner preferred him clean-faced and he always thought the glasses looked absurd on him.

_“You know that I don’t care what you look like,” Amanda had said, leaning against the bathroom doorframe, eight hours until departure, watching him destroy weeks worth of disguise. Mentally, she was picturing how much better an array of her privately planned activities on this trip would be with the bristly itch of his beard in the way but still…_

_“And I don’t like having this mess on my face,”  
_

_“But people will notice. People will stare,”  
_

_“Amy, we have fought too many beasts, I have been impaled twice, I have assisted a woman I don’t know stitch your organs back into your abdominal cavity, we watched a—-….. forgive me if I do not give a_ fuck _what some Earthen tourist thinks of us,” he rinsed the head of the clipper under the faucet and set it aside. He could clean up while she slept and before he finished repacking her suitcase with things they actually needed as opposed to what her idea of ‘necessities’ were_

_“They’ll probably assume we’re spacer trash or Lunar snobs anyway.”_

_“If you’re comfortable with strangers assuming the worst about us,” he turns and gently takes her face in his hand, “then so am I.”  
_

Now she looked less than stellar, make-up from dinner washed off, her hair damp around her shoulders, and an ugly hotel robe around herself. She figured he must have meant ‘angel’ becuase the towel was white, but honestly it was a long day and they had their over-eager fun the night before carrying on this morning too, and she knew that Samuels was often more eager for physical romance than he ever let on, but _she’s tired_. 

“Aren’t you exhausted?” she asked.

“Mentally, I’ve experienced enough tedium in the endless circle of stress than I care to deal with. Physically….if you aren’t exhausted I’m willing to finish what we started this morning.”

“Tomorrow,” she said, flopping onto the couch, her lover reclined on the bed across from her. He dog-ears his page of the mass-market novel he got in the giftshop of the Bradbury museum, and sets it aside. 

“Good…becuase today was–a lot,”

_two men across the terrace from them watch intently, and they’ve already told off a handful of gawkers, and just as many distasteful glares left ignored, but this is different, the man with strawberry blond hair looks almost in awe, his companion confused._

_“Have a problem?” Amanda hissed at them as they walked by. The attention pissed her off, but the fact that it depressed her partner (_ husband _, she always corrects herself, legal or not)? That made her angry._

_“No, we’re sorry we–” the darker one looked for help from the blond; a conversation in silent eye contact was exchanged, and his companion, his boyfriend took his hand and looked between the other couple.  
_

_“We didn’t think we’d ever meet anyone like us.”  
_

_“_ Those boys were nice.”

“I think we made their whole trip,” Amanda had told them of her friends, loosely of course, forgoing the fact that they were all pirates and poachers in the eyes of interstellar law: that they personally knew two other couples that were, _like them_. The two young men spent half the afternoon talking with them, asking questions, opinions on the laws an current controversy of the week in the robotics industry.

“And I like to think there are more like us…And more who recognized us, but said nothing,”

“This hasn’t gone as badly as it could have,” she added, out of habit reaching for her datapad to see who bothered to send her message—

“Chris it passed.” 

“It–” 

There was no question of what “it” was, the law regarding synthetic citizenship had been tossed around and attempted to be underwritten in various bills over the past years, and estimates for it’s eventual passing were measured in decades, years, not months, but here, in some strange bedroom hundreds of thousands of miles.

“Limited citizenship on Terra and immediate Terra-bound colonies–that would mean Mars,” she read wanting to read more but also wanting to set it down as the reality sunk in. She thought of the two men from earlier, probably thinking the same things, the same shock. 

Christopher got off the bed and kneeled in front of her, taking the datapad from her hands and dropping it on the floor in favor of holding her hands himself.

“Chris?”

“Marry me. Marry me, tonight, tomorrow–as soon as we can, legally and on the books, under our real names before someone outlaws it.”

Amanda nods.

“Tomorrow morning, first thing–I don’t think anywhere at this hour could do it–” it’s not as important to her, it never was, but this means the universe to him and she’d kill for him.

He reverently kissed her the backs of her hands before pulling her up, hugging her tight, her mind less clear than his, a million questions and thoughts she couldn’t just file backwards in favor of focusing on the moment, but she tried, his smile never wider and eyes never more human.


End file.
